Sauron, I was referring to debtors in general, not you. I said in my first post here that “Not that any of this makes the way Coleman treated you ok, or anything. I just thought a little defense of the collections people was in order.”
I don’t know if it’s the amount of pride you show at your dishonest tactics, or the generalization you make about people that owe on a debt that pisses me off the most.
I once had a bill collector “hot on my trail” regarding an old debt that I, and this is the honest-to-God-truth, didn’t know about. I moved around a lot (college student) and this particular debt failed to get forwarded. The first time they called I was helpful and friendly even though this woman was treating me as if I was the scum of the earth, and sent a check that day. The check was cashed. Two weeks later, this woman was calling me again, and if possible, was being nastier than the first time I spoke with her. When I DARED to question her “almighty bill collector” authority, she had the nerve to come back with a “well maybe if you paid your bills, you wouldn’t be bothered.” Apparently that’s not the case since the BILL WAS PAID.
In my opinion, most bill collectors have some sadist tendencies. They get off on humilating and bullying people before giving the “debtor” a chance to get a word in edgewise.
You don’t sound any better than Mr. Coleman, frankly. :rolleyes: :wally
Why shouldn’t he be allowed to lie, cheat, and defraud? After all, I have recently learned that law enforcement authorities may do that when they question you as a crim… er, suspect.
My sympathies, Sauron.
When the first ex-MrRobyn and I were just married, I got a call at home from someone at a debt-collection agency about a bill my ex had incurred. I had no idea that this bill existed; it was fairly small. Suffice it to say, I had nothing to do with it at all.
This charming lady called me a liar and insinuated for fifteen minutes that a) I had knowledge of this debt and b) that I had something to do with it. I could not get in a word edgewise. Meanwhile, my mother was on the phone long-distance and was forced to wait for this diatribe to end.
I got a number and talked to this woman’s supervisor. I told her what her agent had said to me and that I had no knowledge of this debt. She told me that this was a just and legal debt, blah blah blah. I said I wasn’t arguing that. I just didn’t know that my ex owed $X to XXXXX. I further said that if they sent a duplicate bill, that I would see that my husband got it and paid it. The next time the bitch agent called, she hung up when I told her my husband wasn’t home. She’d been instructed not to talk to me.
Now, if I get a collections call (which doesn’t happen often), I make sure I get names and numbers so if I have to call them on their behavior, I know who’s to blame.
Robin
Most debt collectors are lying sacks of shit who think that abusing people is not only good but fun.
Oh wait, I haven’t talked to most debt collectors. Have you talked to most debtors? Asshat.
POSD here. I have a number of collection accounts. Most of them are medical. I got myself hospitalized and ended up unemployed with tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills. Not quite seeing how ending up in the hospital and losing my job makes me a scumbag in your eyes.
Lucky for me your opinion of me matters not at all.
Maybe if fucktard debt collectors like you stopped treating debtors like shit and started treating them like people you might not have to resort to underhanded garbage like lying to their friends and neighbors.
[Jesus said,] "Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.
"The servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.
"But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.
"His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’
"But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened.
“Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.”
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Dangerosa *
**My ex-husband was being chased by bill collectors as we were breaking up. Unlike Shodan, for good reasons.
Holy stolen identity, Batman!
I’m reading this thread, but I have never been chased by bill collectors!
Regards,
Shodan
It might be legal to let people believe you’re an old friend, it might not be a lie technically speaking, but I strongly feel it’s morally wrong, since your intent is clearly to deceive people. I would have to be starving or homeless to accept being paid to do such a thing.
Unfortunatly there are some people who thrive at this kind of thing and so it seems from Debaser’s posts, actually get off on it. I think they view themselves as some kind of renegade cops, helping to get of evil, scumbag debtors unfit to breathe the same air as themselves, creating havok and spreading bile wherever they go, making the streets safe again for the moral, upstanding citizens with credit reports laced in gold, restoring peace again to all of the villages in Bank U.S.A. Land…
Since when do I have to talk to “most debtors” to make that determination?
Years ago, when I worked in collections, I would call over 100 debtors a day. I did this for several years, working summers and part time in college. This qualifies me to speak on what “most” debtors are.
Nitpick pre-empt: I am using the term “debtor” to mean someone who has accounts that are placed in collections. Not the generalized term “debtor” meaning anyone who has debt. Technically anybody with a credit card even that pays on time is a “debtor”.
In order to get an account into collections it must be charged off by the originator of the loan. For credit cards this usually is 6 months. That means that for 6 months nothing has been paid. Even a $10 payment would be enough to prevent the debt being charged off. So, collectors are dealing with people who have not paid thier bills in 6 months, and they haven’t bothered to declare bankrupcy. Fuck em.
**
POSD?
I haven’t ever collected medical accounts, so I won’t speak on it.
**
These people don’t deserve to be treated nice. They owe the collector that is calling them money. They need to pay. If you give them a chance then they will tell you their sob story, doing anything they can to justify not paying. The collectors don’t need to listen to this. The debtors cannot be given justification. They need to be told that they must pay the bill.
There are plenty of protections for debtors. They can declare bankrupcy. They could have sent in a $10 payment to the credit card company. They choose not to, they must suffer the consequences. Getting a few phone calls asking for the money that is owed is hardly capital punishment.
It sounds like the debt collector that called you was a lot like Mr. Coleman. They didn’t treat you any different than the other 99 people that they called that day. But, you are different, you aren’t a scumbag debtor. You just have one account that slipped through the cracks.
See, when a new debtor comes in to the file of a collector, it is not difficult to tell a lot about them. Looking at someones credit report you can see a person that has a mortgage that’s paid on time, 3 credit cards all paid up on time, 5 retail cards that are paid up on time, very few 30 day lates in the credit history, and this one account that is not paid up.
That would be an immediate red flag to any good collector that this account could be in dispute, or that the person doesn’t know about it. (usually accounts like this happen when the original loaner doesn’t have a phone number to contact the debtor).
When I would get a debtor like this I would not treat them the same as a more typical account. They just need a friendly reminder, and information on where to send payment. Or, if it’s a dispute, I would flag the account to make sure they aren’t called again, and pass it along to the legal department of the original loaner.
However, this is not what the vast majority of people in collections are. A typical account looks like: no mortgage, 10 charge cards: all cancelled for non payment. 10 retail cards: 8 cancelled for non payment. Car pmt that is the only thing getting paid.
This guy, when I get him on the phone will find that I am very much an asshole to him. I don’t need to let this debtor have a word in. He needs to be told to pay, or that legal action will be taken against him.
The trouble is, the collectors are dealing with my second hypothetical person 99% of the time, so when the occasional “good debtor” comes in they don’t treat them any differently. This is unfortunate. A better collector would not do this.
Just checking in to say that the written communication I was supposed to get from either “Investigator Coleman” or his company, CRB, still hasn’t arrived. The FDCPA requires them to follow up via letter within five days of contacting me by phone.
However, I’d be willing to bet that by now they’ve received my letter, telling them I definitely dispute the debt and that they’d been reported to both the Federal Trade Commission and the Alabama Attorney General’s office.
Gosh, they just keep on violating that law. I wonder what it would be like to own a collection agency? 
I’d also like to chime in to say that whenever I have gotten a message from a collection agency (I had a bumpy patch, but paid everything off, so I hope I’m yet again fit to breathe the same air as Debaser) they’ve never said in the message where they were calling from or what they were calling about. They just left a name and number. And wondered why I never called back.
Also, Debaser: The times I’ve worked with collections agencies (every time they did reach me, I either did payment over the phone, or mailed payment that day thankyouverymuch, if they were willing to work WITH me i.e. payment plan, instead of just getting all condesending and insulting and telling me I NEED TO PAY, like you seem to do) and in a couple of cases, the account itself was only a couple months old (gym membership), so you’re 6 month rule is not always true.
I really, really, really hope you hit some unescapable financial problems and get to experience first hand the abuse some unfortunate “debtors” have to endure because some assmonkey on a power trip that looked over their credit report (which by the way, isn’t always accurate, mine says i’m an 84 year old woman instead of a 24 year old which makes you all seem like even more like prince/ess, calling up an 84 year old woman and yelling at her?) and decided they were scum.
Sorry Shodan and Sauron, did the “mix up my “s” posters” thing.
(And you guys aren’t confused in my brain any other way than having six letter S names, but everyone knows that all people with six letter S names are the same, right. Some of my best friends have six letter S names.)
Debaser
When one is stating that “most” of anything are a certain thing, it is generally a good idea to have observed “most” of the thing in question. For example, if one says “most apples are red” it’s a good idea to have some familiarity with apples before stating with authority that “most” of them are red, as opposed to yellow, green, etc. You claijm that “most” debtors are scumbags, so it’s reasonable for me to expect that you have interacted with “most” of the people whose accounts have been placed with collection agencies to make that determination. Now, had you said simply “most of the debtors with whom I have spoken are scumbags” I’d have no quibble with your statement. You chose to go beyond your own experience to generalize to an entire group, the majority of whom you have not interacted with.
Piece of Shit Debtor.
No, she’s a scumbag who didn’t bother to pay her bill for six months and didn’t bother to declare bankruptcy. So fuck her, right? Or do you maybe get that your fucked up attitude is, well, a little fucked up?
Unless maybe they have medical accounts, or maybe just “one account that slipped through the cracks”? Consistent much?
As I had mentioned, I work in collections, so I know as well as you do that actions have consequences and that debtors need to pay their bills. I also know, apparently better than you do, that someone who thinks that the collector understands their situation and is willing to work with them (even if "working with them " is only their perception) is more likely to pay their bill than someone who’s treated like the “scumbags” you think we debtors are.
And I second the motion that you find yourself in some dire but temporary financial straits that get you landed on a collector’s list. Reaping what you sow and all that. Prick.
Chiming in on the chime-in: My husband used to work for a debt collection agency in Montana. He told me that if they had to leave a message on a machine or with another person, they were legally forbidden to say that they were calling from a debt collection agency because it’s a potential violation of the callee’s privacy to let others know that the callee had a debt that had gone to collection. I don’t know if that was federal or state law, so it might be different elsewhere.
Well that doesn’t make sense in that according to those laws, Debaser couldn’t be airing out someone’s dirty financial laundry to their neighbors like she/he was bragging about doing before.
Well, although i think Debaser has made a bit of an ass of him/herself on this thread, i do feel compelled to come to his/her defence here. In an earlier post, when discussing leaving messages with neighbours, Debaser did say:
Although, whether the bill is mentioned or not, i think the practice of calling someone’s neighbours is reprehensible. If i ever get such a call asking me to leave a message with a neighbour, the caller will get a very polite “Go fuck yourself.”
So, would that be “please go fuck yourself”?