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There's No Place To Hide
By Lucy Lazarony - Reprinted from BankRate.com with permission.
Sure, you're behind on some bills, but nobody deserves to be treated like this...
Badgering phone calls and threats, insults and outright lies—these are just a few of the unfair and illegal tactics that some debt collectors unleash on consumers. These rogue collectors don't represent the entire industry, but they are not uncommon.
"It's just threats and intimidation, but you keep it vague," says Michael Flannagan, a former debt-collection supervisor in Tacoma, Wash. "A lot of things bill collectors do are downright dirty and illegal."
Third-party collectors, agencies hired by creditors to collect unpaid bills, are some of the most abusive.
Just ask Angela M., a mother of two, in Denton, Texas. She fell behind on four credit card bills in late 2001.
"When it went to the collection agencies, it turned really personal," Angela says.
"They called me a deadbeat. They called me a criminal. I had perfect, spotless credit before this happened."
Angela's roughly $40,000 in overdue debt stems from a small business. She opened a children's boutique in 1998.
One debt collector accused her of running up her credit card balances with no intention of paying.
One collector told her to sell her house. Another threatened her home. One debt collector scolded her for taking her children to Chuck E. Cheese for pizza. Another collector told Angela, who is expecting another child, that she had no business being pregnant.
The calls were constant and the insults seemed endless.
"They were calling all the time and I told them I couldn't pay and they would just keep calling," Angela says.
"I was terrified. I thought I was going to end up in debtor's prison or at least lose my home."
Intimidation usually works
And that's exactly how a debt collector wants you to feel. They figure if they harass you enough, you'll pay up.
"The collection industry is sometimes so motivated to collect that they'll do anything and I mean anything to accomplish that," says Peter Barry, a consumer rights trial lawyer in St. Paul, Minn.
It doesn't matter that you don't have the money or that you have more important bills to pay first. It doesn't matter that you were sick or had an accident or lost your job.
"You're just an account number they need to get money out of," says Mary Fons, a consumer protection attorney in Stoughton, Wisc.
Is it your bill?
