The Scumbag Tactics of Debt Collectors
By Anonymous
I work in the debt relief industry, helping people who are burdened with credit card debt. So the majority of my day is spent talking to people to see if I can help them out. One of the topics that people are always bringing up is the harassment that they receive from the debt collectors.
It seems as if everyone has their own story and experience in dealing with these people. And believe me I think I have heard it all. Stories ranging from collectors saying they were going to physically come to the debtors house all the way to threats of jail time, which is very illegal. Anyone who has been in this situation knows how unpleasant it can be. Often times collectors will go as far as calling someone's neighbors and relatives, in an attempt to embarrass someone into sending them money.
These people use an array of tactics to aid them in their collection efforts, many of them being illegal. For example, many collectors threaten with litigation. Which they cannot legally do unless they are actually in process of suing the person. But this fear tactic works miracles for them scaring many people into sending them money. While the threat of being sued is very real, it does not happen anywhere near as often as the collectors would like you to think, and they know this and use it greatly to their advantage.
They love playing off of people's emotions and self pride. Calling the debtor all sorts of names in an attempt to belittle the person, thus prompting them to make payments. Another very slimy tactic used is the "good faith" or "token payment". Telling the debtor that you will look a lot better in our eyes if you send any amount of money that you can.
When in reality what they are trying to accomplish is to reset the Statue of Limitations, keeping the option of litigation alive that much longer. You are not going to better yourself at all by sending them $10 or $20, when you owe thousands, just to show good faith to the collector. Your simply just going to fall deeper into their trap.
Another tactic that is used is the automatic dialing machines. The fact is that there are just way to many people that are in collections for them to possibly call everyone of them. It would be grueling for the collector to sit there and dial out hundreds to thousands of number a day.
So instead an automatic dialer does it for them, and once someone picks up and says hello this triggers the machine to put the call through to a collector on standby. The psychology behind this is that the machine can call your house multiple times throughout the day if you do not pick up.
So the appearance to the debtor is that there is a collector out there who is dead set on getting you, which makes the situation seem a lot scarier. A little trick to find out if it is a debt collector calling you is to be silent when you pick up the phone and do not say hello. If 15-20 seconds go by of just silence then you know it is a collector calling you.
For the readers of this post who have experienced the harassment please feel free to comment and share your stories, and if you have any extra tips on how you dealt with these people it will be greatly appreciated. Knowledge is power when dealing with collectors, so the more people who are enlightened to their slimly tactics the better.
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