A business with a huge unpaid debt load has policies that create the problem. For example, I'll bet as a collector you were lucky to get 30% of your bad debts paid. Now if the vet charged 50% of the bill to get fluffy back (we can put that on your master card or visa) he would have been way ahead of the game. He would have also saved money by not having enough of a debt-load to hire someone to collect his debts. I have found in my experience as a small business consultant that there is just as much responsiblity on the part of the business owner in creating debt as there is on the side of the consumer. This is especially true when the consumers are forced to make decisions while in a highly emotional state. In my opinion it is up to the Vet to set policies that help their clients not make bad financial decisions. It's his job to contain his emotions and not try to "make everything better". Also as a collector you were not trained to see "them", as people but as bills to be paid. Circumstances just got in the way of your end goal, correct? Paying for fluffy just isn't as important as say food, mortgage, car payments and utilities and taxes. For most of us if we have any money left over it's pretty hard to choose paying a past bill over going to the lake for the weekend. However, just because we would make that choice, doesn't mean that we should be subject to a loss of credit that is so important, in this day and age. The punishment just doesn't fit the crime. Keep the collections in house, dismantle the credit system, eliminate credit scores, and let's get back to a more traditional/human way of making these decisions. My two cents, CBJ
Yes I did and miraculously I get a letter from the CA on Saturday stating that all of my collection accounts are paid in full and they are reporting it that way. I can't believe my luck, four of my collections are from this agency and they report to the big three. Isn't that like 12 violations? With proof? And didn't the 9th District Federal Court allow for the collection of attorney fees in these types of actions. $12,000 thats a lot of mulla. CBJ
First of all, I've always seen people as humans, and I wasn't hired as a debt collector. I was a veterinary technician that did the billing. We did very little billing and had a policy that disuaded billing,and part of it was a deposit up front. The number of open accounts when I did the billing was quite small. You seem to assume that I nor the vet had no clue about collecting bills, and on this front you are wrong. You are also wrong if you assume that I am some heartless freak that made people cry on the phone, or destroyed their credit just for the heck of it. Again, since no one bothers to read my posts and stop and consider what it is I am saying the ones that I took the court created a debt without any intention of paying. I live in a fairly small community and it is quite easy to ask around and find out if someone isn't being up front with you, and I saw these people frequently outside of the practice. When you see them in the store and they are buying a VCR or some other appliance after feeding you a sob story, well quite frankly my sympathy lies elsewhere. I knew who was in trouble and once again I will say that these folks didn't end up going to court.
A collection "Paid in full" is a negative tradeline!!! Any reference to a CA is a Very Bad Thing. See if you can get them to delete entirely. Your situation will dictate when and how forcefully you pursue getting them deleted. Dancer
Exactly, who the @#$# are these people. They know it's negative, they know they can't validate... so whats with all of the vindictiveness? CBJ
So I guess your saying here is that it's ok to blow off your debts and go to the lake huh, and everyone should just be ok with that and everyone should just keep giving you a credit line when you obviously would rather blow the money at the lake than take responsibility for your debt? I think that's a far cry from having money problems where you simply can't pay the bill and you get impossibly behind during a financial crises and no one is willing to work with you, or having a collection agency come for a bill that you didn't create. I believe that the majority of people here know of mistakes they have made, including myself. I knew what would happen to my credit the minute things went sour, but never felt that the creditors didn't have a right to attempt legal means to collect. You may be a business consultant but I certainly wouldn't want you doing any consulting for any business I might have. There are plenty of people who have blown money that they should have sent to pay a bill, However I doubt that most people think that it is the creditors moral obligation NOT to do anything about recovering it. The problem is FOR THE LAST TIME AND WITH A DRUM ROLL PLEASE...... THE PROBLEMS ARE THE CA'S THAT HARRASS, LIE, BUY BANKRUPT DEBTS, REFUSE TO WORK WITH THE DEBTORS DURING FINANCIAL CRISES, CA'S WHO BUY ANCIENT DEBTS, ATTEMPT TO COLLECT NON-EXISTENT DEBTS AND SELL BANKRUPT DEBTS AND CHARGE EXHORBITANT FEES AND INTEREST This has created a system where once the downhill slide has begun it is often impossible to recover once the fees and interest have accumulated. Do the creditors have a right to want their money?..of course, what they don't have a right to do is harrass and abuse me, and I of course have every right to defend myself and my credit by whatever means available to me.
CBJ, Careful what you wish for-you may get it! I started in banking in 1973 when things were done on a one to one basis with a human touch. The result was there was an awful lot less credit granted than you have today. If you were a young, single female or, a member of a minority group, you had a tough time getting credit. Particularly, unsecured credit. Lending institutions were much smaller and filled with older conservative bankers who didn't like non collaterlized loans and, had zero sense of humor when someone didn't pay. Keep collections in house. The last 2 years I was in banking, I headed up in house collections for our small holding company. I promise you, you wouldn't want me after you. Lenders then were very quick to sue and at the same time, tighten credit standards. The end result was a lot fewer consumer loans were underwrittten and an entire class of people found getting any sort of loan difficult. Also, loan documents would require a credit reference {just like today}. The difference is, I'd pick up the phone and call and ask your reference about any trouble. ANd, the person on the other end of the would tell me in detail any problems they may have had with your account and I'd do the same when asked to supply a credit reference for a customer. If you stiffed anybody at any time, you were done credit wise. No scoring, no "b" paper, no "pricing in risk". Just thanks but we are unable to process your loan application.
You sound like a person who has an axe to grind. Don't grind it on me. I don't need to make moral judgemments about people who pay or don't pay their bills. I figure that if they need to go to the lake more than they need to pay me, who am I to amke a judgement about what is good for their well being. I don't have to let them get in a position where they owe me money, but if I do it's because I made the decision and I have to accept that I made a bad judgement and move on. Sounds to me like you are really into punishment. What you have said in a nutshell, is if they don't have a reason that passes my standard, then then the heck with them, they deserve to have their lives ruined over a $200 balance on a vet bill. Just sounds pretty sever in my book. Something I would never do. Not to worry, you couldn't afford me on a tech's salary. However if you could I would save you much more money than I charge, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to support my family for the last 15 years. One of my main tenants for business owners to not get themselves in a position where they have to concentrate on collections instead of sales. CBJ CBJ
An Axe to grind? NOT really, but I could say the same about you. You seem to think I'm this stupid heartless freak that enjoyed hurting people. You couldn't be MORE WRONG on that account. You never bothered to think about what I wrote. Your comments about me judging people is laughable, I think I was extremely fair and so did my boss, and anyone else who knows me. I'm quite aware of the principles of business accounting, and the need to keep the number of open accounts to a minimum is a point I made previously in another post and ANOTHER THING you never bothered to read . You don't want to make moral judgements about people who pay their bills, but you do seem to be making a moral commentary about anyone the money is owed to. a moral judgement is a moral judgement regardless.
I don't believe it has to be one way or another. I think that if a company wants your business they should have to at least look at your credit report, and then talk to you in person about anything that might be a problem. Instead it has been institutionalized into a numbers game and credit is given to those who can't handle it and denied those who can. The numbers don't make since when inquireies and collections count more than job stability and percentage of good accounts. I have one friend, who happens to be a single female in her forties, can't get a home loan (the first and most important leg of building financial security and independance) because of a Visa account which was her ex's responsiblity in the divorce papers. The bank is telling her that it is here responsibility which is crap because a judge has ordered it otherwise, but the bank is still harassing her and her score is below 600. Even though she has been a teacher with the same school for years, has paid rent at the same house for 8.5 years, has 3 credit card accounts that are in good standing, no BK, no foreclosures, no judgements and no collections. The system is broken. The reason credit wasn't given before is the same reason that a lot of people didn't get a lot of things. If you weren't in the old boys network, you weren't going to get squat. However, minorities and women are now creating their own financial infrastructure which might be able to compete if it weren't for the way credit has now been structured. CBJ
As sometimes happens in email there are misunderstandings. This is not about you, personally it is about the statements that you make, and it is those statements that I am disagreeing with so there is no need to defend yourself. I'm sure you are a upstanding citizen and person. However the ideas you bring across are pretty standard, and a great way to dehuminize someone. It think it comes from a place of "I have to pay my bills, so everyone else has to pay theirs also", and then we put whatever standard we have for ourselves as the standard all must live by. What if our preverbial client who hasn't paid his bill is taking his family to the lake in order to try to save his marriage. Or maybe he is buying the VCR because that is all they can afford for entertainment or maybe they have a membership at the health club for due to stress related illness. Lots of things happen that you don't know about whether you live in a small town or not. And yes it is hard to have an opinion without being judgemental. Best regards, CBJ
You are right about mistunderstandings in email, and I understand your own point. I think though that somewhere you simply missed what I was saying about my experiences collecting...I did very few and was never very good at it because I had way too much sympathy for people. I' said it enough times I guess I got a little frustrated with you of course it might been the comment about not being able to afford you as well, and this probably has to do with the fact I go to a college that has a large number of wealthy gals that make no bones about letting you know they have money, and it gets old having the fact that you don't have any money thrown in your face. You obviously are a decent humane person to be so forgiving of debts, and the point about the guy saving his marriage by going to the lake is well taken. Thankfully for all I don't plan on doing collections again and hopefully will making a decent living after graduation acting as a home broker for Conner Homes. For the record I don't necessarily agree with the credit system either, and though I think that it should be ok to go after money that is genuinely owed, I believe that once its paid it should be completely removed from your credit report. No paid collections, no however many days late, just simply read as "paid" and once the sol has expired it should also be permenantly and forever removed. In my opinion the SOL should only be 2 years because if you haven't gotten your act together within two years I dont' think you should have a right to harrass somebody about a debt. I think that CRA should be held much more accountable than they are, as well as CAs for their tactics. Also I don't think ANYONE should be able to use your credit report for hiring purposes. I think that is where a bad credit report can really screw up your life. I don't see how its relavent to your work performance that you had a bankruptcy or collections on your report. Businesses bankrupt all the time and the individuals that were responsible for financial decisions simply move on to the next position, yet when we do it personally there seems to be a different standard we are held to. I've had my own share of nasty collectors calling my home, and it really messed up my life for a bit, so believe me I am no champion of Collection Agencies. I myself currently have terrible credit and couldn't get credit anywhere if I had to have it to save my life. I made the decision to return to school 4 years ago, and though I will graduate in 2 weeks, the stress from working very part time was too much for my financial situation. We finally declared bankruptcy in february and maybe at some point well have decent credit again.
1*Once you have paid an account you have lived up to your end of the bargin so you are correct. 2*2Yrs.is a little short The 7 to 10 yers is overkill.It also distorts a persons current position. 3 Years is ideal as it is fair to both sides !
