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By Peter Duffy
E-mail Peter Duffy
It’s 6:30 in the evening. You and your family are eating dinner. The phone rings, so you get up to answer it. It’s a bill collector. How do you handle the call? What happens next can have a huge impact on a number of things. You only have a split second to make a decision about handling the call that may affect many areas of you life. How did this happen? How did it come to this? The biggest question is does the debtor even know how much this one call can affect? The answer is no. Most people are shocked, embarrassed and scared that they are even being called by a collector.
I’ve read many articles recently about how bad the debt collection industry is. The articles have talked about how the industry is abusive, unregulated and pretty much allowed to do whatever they deem necessary to collect debts. While these articles usually do start out talking about a specific tactic used in a specific setting by a specific agency, they almost always go on to broadly bash the entire industry. Unfortunately, this type of potentially irresponsible journalism is helping to feed the fire, not quell it.
When people read articles about collector abuses, they get preconceived notions about how all debt collectors conduct their calls. When they receive a call from a debt collector, they react in as severe a way as possible. Usually this includes screaming, cursing, hanging up, lying and general avoidance. When these things happen, the collector is forced into using more aggressive means to get the job done. Their job is to collect the debt. In my opinion, the best way to make collections work is to find out what it takes to make the debt you are collecting a priority to the debtor. One individual’s priorities are not going to be the same as another individual’s. If the debtor will not cooperate or even discuss the debt, the collector has no other option but to resort to tactics such as legal action. Unfortunately, in some cases, the more aggressive the tactic, the more likely it is that you will be successful in your job.
Debt collection has always had a bad name as an industry. There are several reasons for this. The first is that it stems from the time period prior to the enactment of the FDCPA when debt collectors, in general, were abusive because they could be. Second, some debt collectors are abusive. That’s the bottom line. There are bad apples in every industry. Another reason is that the media almost always portrays the collection industry in the worst light possible. I understand that bad news and sensationalism make for better sales, but I feel both sides of the story need to be addressed. If you find an example of abuse in the charity industry for instance, you wouldn’t find articles about not donating to any charities anymore would you? If every individual paid their debts, the debt collection industry would not exist, but that just isn’t the case. Debt is exploding, and it has to be dealt with in order to assure that costs to consumers stay reasonable and companies are able to continue to do business.
The debt collection industry is regulated. The FTC doesn’t have the time or resources to investigate every single potential case of abuse. It’s ridiculous to think they can. That’s why the FDCPA includes provisions for civil remedies against offenders. This is for balance and for self regulation. It works, trust me. Every collector fears an FDCPA lawsuit because the suit isn’t only against the agency, but also against the collector personally. The FTC has a job to investigate consistent, deliberate, repeat offenders that are disregarding the law. They do that among many other things. With these offenders, the civil remedies are not enough and that’s when the FTC steps in. As far as the Attorneys General go, they do investigate claims of abuse. This is usually done by getting both sides of the story and then making a decision.
Complaints on collection agencies and collectors have increased dramatically in recent years due to many factors. One is the increase in the number of collectors. More collectors equal more calls and more complaints from debtors. It only makes sense. You also have the availability of the internet to many more people. The internet has a vast amount of information that virtually anyone can now access. Some of the information provides advantage to the collector and other information provides advantage to the debtor. Information that is available includes how to contact the FTC to file a complaint and what your rights are as a debtor as well as how to avoid paying your debts and ways to lead a collector into a violation so you don’t have to pay. There is also a lot of misinformation that is to no real advantage to either side. This information might include rights you don’t actually have and omission of rights creditors do have. Of course, there are legitimate complaints. There are also many duplicate complainers, complaints that stem from misinformation and completely false claims meant to do no more than delay resolution and distract all of the parties involved.
What journalists should do is perhaps not only outline both sides of the specific story of the debtor that was abused, but also other similar cases, why it’s against the law, what others can do in a similar situation, what the Attorney General and the FTC have to say about it and maybe how to avoid the entire situation with financial education. There are debtors genuinely in a bad situation where they’ve faced a collection law abuse, but most debts are legitimately owed, not taken care of and no abuse has occurred. An educational article would be better for everyone rather than another article that talks about how bad the entire industry is and scares more people into a situation where they won’t work with the collectors that call them. Boy, wouldn’t that be something!
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