Great Article about debt collector's

Introduction
What got to me later was the answering machine message. It offered a choice of
Jim, Harley or Bob. Three men. I was tracking a woman named Samantha, who owed
$3,000 on a major credit card. The phone number I had dialed was the one on the
account. As a debt collector, my first task was to call this number and demand payment.
So when the answering machine beeped I took a breath and started to recite the vague
message that the law allows debt collectors to leave. Unexpectedly, halfway into my spiel
about some "important business matter" that required Samantha's attention, Jim picked
up.
Talking to people like Jim is far outside my area of expertise. I had left my job as
a newspaper reporter to work as a debt collector in Buffalo, a hub for the collection
industry. As a business reporter I had become intrigued at how credit can transform
people's lives into a modern form of debt slavery, bonding them to endless monthly
payments. People who try to ignore the bonds may be subjected to ruthless threats by the
people whose job it is to collect the debts. Workers at one notorious firm that I wrote
about liked to tell children that their mommy would have to go to jail if she didn't come
to the phone, investigators found. Other collectors threatened people with jail for debts
that weren't even theirs, or had been paid off years before..

debt collectors caused more than 300,000 complaints to the Federal Trade
Commission in the past five years, more than any other industry that the agency oversees.
The rate of complaints is exploding, have more than tripled since 2003. The No. 1
complaint is that collectors are demanding money that people don't really owe. As the
industry casts its net wider and wider -- making an estimated one billion- telephone calls
a year -- a growing number of people say they are getting squeezed in error.
I wrote a series for the newspaper backing the claim of consumer advocates: that
threats and lies are rampant because toothless debtor protection law makes them
profitable. The $1,000 federal civil penalty for collection abuses was enacted by Jimmy
Carter back in 1978 and hasn't been updated since. In the meantime, credit use has
flourished and inflation has eroded the penalty to a cost of doing business.
But the collection industry denies that a wave of prohibited tactics is behind the
surge in complaints. A few "bad apples" are to blame for some of the outcry, the
industry's lobby group argues. Agencies also point to rising debt levels, and to consumers'
simple irritation at being dunned. Being irritated or even shamed by a debt collector isn't
illegal, after all. And there's plenty of irritation to go around these days, as the consumer
debt bubble pops. Mortgage foreclosures and loan default rates have climbed to historic
levels, perhaps even indicating that the U.S. consumer's long love affair with easy credit
has finally soured.
Where does the truth lie? Are the complaints valid, or are they mainly the
grousing of a consumer class that has finally been presented the bill for a long, crazy
spending binge? There are mounds of court and regulatory records of complaints against
collectors, but they're surprisingly inconclusive. Faced with a civil court action brought
under consumer protection law, collection agencies usually decide to settle, leaving the
question of their guilt or innocence unanswered.

I typed the code for "deceased" in the account status window then got up from my cubicle
-- really a kind of booth the size of a library carrel, with a phone and a computer screen. I
walked past row upon row of other stalls, past the whiteboard listing the dollar amounts
collectors had brought in so far, down the stairs and outside into the gray winter day. A
clot of smokers stood there at the edge of the parking lot, slowing my way to my car and
home. It was break time. By chance, I had walked out on the heels of everyone else.
Lucky thing, or I would have walked off the job only a few days in. Leaving the building
without permission during working hours is punishable by dismissal, especially for
trainees who haven't made their probationary goal yet.
"How's it going today," Pamela asked, squinting at me. The turmoil I felt must
have shown on my face. Pam is one of the more sensitive members of our training group.
I've already figured her for someone who won't make goal and will be ushered from the
building at the end of our two-month probationary period, if not sooner. I told her about
my call to Jim, Harley and Bob's house. How it ended with me not even demanding
payment, the primary task that we are charged with.
Her eyes widened and she blew out a lungful of smoke derisively. "You hafta call
them back," she said. "Not up to you to be saying who should pay, who doesn't." Getting
a debtor on the phone only happens to us a few times a day, maybe once in every 25
phone calls. Having someone like Jim on the line and failing to even ask for payment is a
tremendous waste. A waste of several hours work, of the single daily call we're allowed
to make to a debtor's home; a waste of an opportunity that the other collectors on the
floor would be eager to make better use of.

Sorry Bernie....beat you to it:

http://www.debtconsolidationcare.com/collection-agencies/about53327.html

:twisted:

You are too good for me

Naw! Just started earlier in the day! :twisted: