Here’s my off-tangent complaint about bill-collectors.
Why are they trying to drum up business at trade shows? I’m trying to get good clients for our company. I want to get stores to buy our stuff and I ned to discuss product with them.
So why are 1/2 dozen of you coming up to me offering your ‘services’? We already have a bill collection service, thank you. We’ve been around for a while. Your promises of “we get the job done” are rather hollow considering that our present agency (who we rarely have to use) works just fine. This is an electronics and gadgets show, why are you here?
Sorry, that was completely off tangent. But I just wanted to get it off my chest.
Hey, you probably just have a greater faith in people’s good intentions than i do, which is certainly no bad thing. And, up until Debaser’s ultimate comment, the issue was still up for grabs. The fact that i was proved right on this occasion doesn’t mean it won’t be the other way around next time.
Did you keep copies of all the letters you sent to the company asking that they terminate your membership and cease billing you? And i wasn’t quite clear as to whether you are dealing with the gym itself, the gym’s parent company, or a debt-collecting agency.
One possibility, though i’m not sure whether or not it applies in your case would be to take the advice of this website:
And, once you finally get them to stop adding on a new debt each month, you can probably just ignore them regarding the “debt” that you have already accrued, because the same website points out:
I’ll bet they would be especially unlikely to sue in a case like yours if you have kept any of your previous correspondence that shows the lengths you went to to cancel your gym membership in the first place.
So, just to remember the season Sauron, couldn’t you threaten the collector with a lidless eye encircled by flame? Or lob a cursed ring of power in their direction?
That is a pretty good idea. At this point I think we owe them about 250 dollars (this is not the gym we owe the money to, but the company that handles their accounts for them. One of those companies that has the mysterious-acronym name…I think it’s ASP or something. We only sent them one letter in the past saying that we were cancelling our membership, after that we’ve always dealt with them on the phone. But I know that we DO have copies of the NUMEROUS faxes we’ve sent them.
I wonder if that letter thing would work for Meier and Frank, too. My husband acquired his ex-wife’s debt to them, because the card had initially been in his name, and their interest rate is un-freakin-believable. Plus, they are the rudest people I have ever talked to on the phone. They pull that friendly “Hi! Is (Mr. Bunny’s first name) there?” thing, and when I ask who it is, they’re always like “It’s John!” When I think it must be one of his friends and put him on the phone, then they turn into evil bill collector people again. I finally let one of them have it when this girl called for him, asked for him by his first name, and when I said he wasn’t there and would she like to leave a message she was all "Oh no, that’s okay, I’ll call back. "
I believe I said “This is his wife, and you WILL by christ tell me who the hell you are!”
I am confused over why Ogre has abandoned me and my many critics have become more outraged with me over this statement:
Let me suggest a hypothetical scenario of what I would consider a “scumbag debtor”.
[begin scenario]
Debtor wants a new computer.
Debtor has no money.
Debtor puts new computer on credit card.
Bills come, debtor doesn’t have money to pay.
6 months later, account is charged off and Mr. Coleman calls debtor.
Debtor: Hello?
Mr. Coleman: Hello, is this Debtor?
Debtor: Yes, this is he/she.
Mr. Coleman: This is an attempt to collect a debt. Any informtion to obtained will be used for that purpose.
GFD4BIF
Collections lingo
(Gives Firm Demand For Balance In Full)
Debtor: I don’t have the money to pay.
[/End scenario]
It is my opinion that this person is a scumbag. They are a scumbag because they don’t have the money to pay for what they have bought.
What do the debtor sympathizers feel Mr. Coleman’s next response should be in the scenario above?
Mr. Coleman: Oh, you don’t have the money. Why didn’t you say so? OK, I will never call again. Have a good night. :rolleyes:
As I said earlier, 99 out of 100 people that a collector talks to don’t have the money. You need to demand the balance in full from everyone though, because that way you will get the 1 out of 100 that does have the ability to pay.
If you are talking to 100 people a day (which isn’t a lot) and you are collecting balances of 5-15K (that was the range I collected) and you get one person a day to pay a BIF (Balance In Full) then you are doing well.
I do admit that this third category exists. I have already stated that I do whatever I can to help those people. I have said that I look at the credit reports to determine this.
Someone who hasn’t paid a credit card bill in 6 months, and has otherwise good credit is probably going to dispute the bill. Or, they might not have any contact information on the account so they don’t know about this bill. (Nearby message time! ) I used to work with these poeple. Back on the first page of this thread I chastized Mr. Coleman for treating you the same as the typical debtor.
However, the vast majority of debtors that were coming across my desk had train-wreck credit reports. No bills were getting paid. These people aren’t “being hassled through no fault of their own”. The accounts were not all in dispute, like yours is. They have a choice to pay the minimum payments, or declare bankrupcy. A bankrupcy only costs a couple hundred bucks. These accounts haven’t been paid in 6 months. They need to pay what they owe, or give me a docket number.
Also, my tailgater analogy was just to point out that I am being held to a much higher standard here than your usual pit-thread. I didn’t mean to say anything about them being similar to debtors. I could have said “Oranges suck!” in my example. People would probably come forward and say “fuck you, oranges are great!”. But, I doubt I would see this “have you seen every orange, or done a statistical analysis of oranges…” nonsense.
Well, what about this scenario, which is basically identical to the one that you give, except i’ve added some more information that the debt collector may not have (i have indicated my own contributions in bold type):
[scenario]
Debtor wants a new computer.
Debtor does not have enough money to pay cash, but has a job and determines that s/he will be able to pay of the computer over the next few months.
Debtor puts new computer on credit card.
Debtor gets caught in company downsizing, and the money that was originally going to pay off computer now has to be used for those minor inconveniences like rent and food.
Bills come, debtor doesn’t have money to pay. Debtor can’t sell computer to recoup money and pay it off, because used computers loose much of their value almost immediately.
6 months later, account is charged off and Mr. Coleman calls debtor.
Debtor: Hello?
Mr. Coleman: Hello, is this Debtor?
Debtor: Yes, this is he/she.
Mr. Coleman: This is an attempt to collect a debt. Any informtion to obtained will be used for that purpose.
GFD4BIF
Collections lingo
(Gives Firm Demand For Balance In Full)
Debtor: I don’t have the money to pay.
[/scenario]
Any one of a thousand other possible scenarios might explain why people end up not having enough money to pay their debts. As i said in my last post, i’m sure that some debtors are just out to get a free ride at the expense of credit card companies, but i’d be willing to bet that many people just end up finding themselves in over their heads after buying things that they felt were necessary for their day-to-day existence.
Why is it so difficult to accept that not all debtors, and probably not even most, are simply out to screw creditor companies? As i said before, Debaser, your job seems to be some sort of religious crusade for you.
No-one on this thread has ever abused you for demanding the balance in full, nor have they questioned your right to do this. Demanding the balance in full on the first call is probably a logical way to do it, because people who do have the money might be induced to pay up. The reason you have been excoriated on this thread is your persistence in labelling such a high proportion of debtors as scumbags when you have no knowledge of their circumstances beyond their credit history (which doesn’t tell the whole story, by a long way), and you have consistently said that you refuse to listen to personal tales of difficulty.
The fact that they might have “train wreck credit reports” still gives you no indication as to why they did not have the money to cover their debts. And while bankruptcy (there’s a ‘t’ in there, financial genius) may cost “only” $200, that could well be a lot of money to someone who is having trouble paying for daily essentials like food and shelter.
I usually like to refrain from abuse, even in The Pit, but you, Debaser, are a fuckwit who needs to acquire the tiniest piece of empathy for other people’s situations, and the intelligence to differentiate between those who are playing the system and those who have fallen on hard times due to circumstances beyond their control. And i join with the others on this thread who have wished upon you financial hardship so that you might learn something about the people whom you are so ready to denigrate.
Hey Debaser? I don’t think anyone here is suggesting that in general people who buy things with no intention of paying for them ever are assholes, or if you prefer “scumbags.” I like to think of them as thieves myself, and have recommended to my boss that we file criminal charges against some of our former customers who obviously never had any intention of paying. I’ve actually had people call me to tell me they have no plans to pay their bill with us and that now that we have terminated their service they are moving on to the next phone company to run up a bill with them that they won’t pay. Yep, those people are scumbags, no questions about it.
It has been my experience, having been on the receiving end of ten thousand debtor calls in the last six months, that the vast majority of those people didn’t go into their service with us not intending to pay. Other bills came up. They used the phone more than they thought they did and they didn’t budget properly. They forgot about the bill for a couple of months. They lost their job and had to choose between a roof and a phone. They were hospitalized, or a family member died.
No, I am not so naive as to think that all of them are being truthful with their reasons for not paying. That’s not the point.
What a well thought out and empathetic response. :rolleyes:
Why don’t you just admit that you can’t give me the easy answer I asked you for that you were so sure I had in front of me in my difficult financial times because there isn’t one.
Playing dumb here is only digging you further into your hole. Your only ally has abandoned you, doesn’t that tell you something? That maybe, just maybe you could be wrong???:eek:
Not all people go out and charge stuff with no intentions of paying. Actually, I’d bet dollars to donuts that the vast majority of the very people you’re calling didn’t. But you are so hell bent on judging them without hearing their side that you would never know that would you?
I’m not writing anything else to you because you obviously have no intentions of answering my questions or aknowledging my statements. Hard to admit defeat isn’t it?
You want a thought out and empathetic response to your hurling insults at me?
No shit. I never said, or even implied, that they do.
As far as “hearing their side” I have said it several times, so I will repeat for the last time:
The collectors do not have the time to do this. If they are listening to sob stories all day they can’t be collecting money.
To which I will add some other, more practical reasons:
If I did listen to debtors, patiently, with gentle understanding the way you would like, my boss would have fired me. No kidding. It’s not the way collectors are trained or even allowed to behave.
Also, “hearing their side” gives the debtors implied justifcation for not paying. The debtor gets off the phone feeling that they don’t have to pay.
Collectors aren’t responisble for the situations that happen to these people. They aren’t obligated to listen. It doesn’t help collect the bill.
And, what question of yours am I dodging?
This one?:
I have answered this numerous times. I don’t expect them to. (Or, I don’t expect 99% of them to.) But, you have to demand it from everyone to get that one percent to pay. Then in a later phone call you set up a payment plan.
Otto, it sounds like collecting phone accounts is a bit different from the charged off credit card accounts that I was collecting. (Once again, years ago. I haven’t worked in collections in several years.)
These people haven’t paid a dime in six months. They had accounts of between 5 and 15 thousand dollar balances. I am sure different approaches would be used to collect a couple hundred dollar phone bill that is a few months late. Not that my experiences are any more valid than yours, I just wanted to point out that we aren’t exactly comparing apples to apples with our collections experiences.
And why do these scenarios relieve the debtor of their obligation to pay the bill?
You read a lot into my posts that just isn’t there.
I never said they were out to screw creditor companies.
I haven’t worked in collections in a long time. I think you are mis-interpreting the importance I place on this issue. I felt like venting a little steam (ok, maybe a lot) at scumbag debtors. Since then I have been defending my position. I am not obsessed with collections any more than the people posting in the tailgating thread (to stick with the theme) are obsessed with tailgaters.
I have been posting on this board for a year and have never discussed collections before that I can recall.
I believe that lezlers has. Some quotes:
It seems to me that she takes great issue with collectors insisting that the balance in full be paid.
Amen!
You’re right about the credit report being only a partial picture of what’s going on. But, it’s all the collector has.
WTF? People that charge up tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt should not have to be bothered to pay $200 for a bankruptcy? (didn’t know about the ‘t’ in there, thanks ) You are overly sypathetic to debtors. It seems to me as if in your haste to prove me wrong on all points you have strayed way to far over to debtor sympathy.
Should there be any consequences of peoples actions? Sheesh.
The why simply isn’t important to a collector except in a few situations. I have already said many times in this thread that I would be helpful to poeple who had accounts in dispute. And I would not be aggressive with people who just had one account and slipped through the cracks due to lack on contact information.
The vast majority of why’s that are out there are people who could either pay $10 a month or declare bankrupcy. I think that lezlers story for instance would fall into this category.
I believe I have already addressed this. But, here goes again…
I do differentiate between people if you mean disputed accounts and a “slip through the cracks” bill that has been missed.
Again this issue of people “playing the system”. I don’t know where you got this from. I am saying most debtors in my experience are scumbags. I never said anything about them playing the system.
Although, I would love to tell some stories about the stuff I would see this particular breed of debtor do. But, they are a small amount of the debtors out there.
Even with the changes you made to my scenario, what changed really? How should a collector treat this hypothetical person who has fallen on hard times? I don’t see any reason he couldn’t make minimum payments or declare bankrupcy unless he was living well beyond his means. These people still need to pay. In your mind, should the collector act as I said and forgive the debt because they fell on hard times?
It won’t happen to me. I was laid of for three months this year. I spent less fucking money. Instead of paying off credit card bills in full I paid minimums. I set a budget and stuck to it. I acted like a fucking adult. If things got really tight I would have had to choose to refi (or sell) my condo to pay my bills or declare bankrupcy. Any way it played out I wouldn’t dodge phone calls from my creditors without paying a cent for 6 months. Unlike most debtors, I am not a scumbag.
(Oh, switch that last debtors with most debtors, in my experience after speaking with thousands of them. )
You’d willingly subject yourself to the kind of treatment that you inflicted on others in the knowledge that you’re subjecting yourself to it for absolutely no rational reason (since despite the abuse you’d receive you still can’t pay)? You’re either dumber than I thought or a serious masochist. The only time I’ve dealt with a collector calling me (ironicly enough, for a telephone account), he called me an “asshole” and his supervisor called me a “fucker” because I agreed with them that I owed money on the bill but wanted to see a copy of the bill. Were I the “scumbag” you seem to think I am (since I also had about $3,000 in credit card debt and about $20,000 in medical bills…oh, and a $50 cable bill from when I got evicted and spent an entire winter living in my car in Wisconsin) I’d have refused to pay anything. Instead we settled for half. Given that experience and the charm of your personality, there’s no way in hell I’d talk to a collector who called for me. The shitty attitude of you and at least some of your colleagues does nothing but make the job harder.
And I don’t think at their core collecting phone bills and collecting credit cards are all that different in anything other than amount. If anything I think collecting on the phone bills may be harder. No one I know thinks they’re entitled to a credit card; everyone seems to think the law entitles them to telephone service on demand.
Then what is it exactly that makes them scumbags. The fact that they’re in the situation they’re in? Because as many people have said, there are many ways one can get themselves into that kind of situation, not many of which makes them a scumbag.
Umm, no. You seem to be completely missing the WHOLE FUCKING POINT of this debate. I’m gonna say it realslow so that even a half-wit such as yourself can understand, k?
No one is arguing that the debt must be paid. People are upset because you are making rash, blanket statements about a bunch of people and even when faced with stories that prove against your stance (mine) you still insist that your stereotype is correct.
Gah! :wally
Oh, and as far as your 3 month layoff sob story? Many people are living hand to mouth paycheck to paycheck. Losing their job or some other misfortune can make the difference between them being upstanding citizens and scumbags (in your eyes apparently). Not everyone has the luxery of re-financing that condo they happen to own. :rolleyes:
Wow, so being stupid and naaive makes one a scumbag? That must mean that most teenaged girls are scumbags. Victims of con-artists are scumbags.
Fuck you and the holier-than-thou horse you rode in on.
I’m praying very hard for your financial demise. Apparently, so are a lot of other people on this thread.
Oh, and by the way. When boyfriend was purchasing stuff on card, he was employed. So was I. The balances climbed BEFORE he lost his job, you idiot. Work on your reading comprehension
) I used to work with these poeple. Back on the first page of this thread I chastized Mr. Coleman for treating you the same as the typical debtor.