Archive for July, 2010

Set-up A Debt Elimination Plan

Set-up A Debt Elimination Plan Manual

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How to Battle Debt Collectors

The economic crisis has left many with increased debts and calls from debt collectors have become a more regular occurrence. However, bullying tactics of debt collectors do not have to be endured by consumers. Here are a few tricks on how to battle the debt collectors:

Learn your rights. Debt collectors must play fair.

Prioritize your bills. Ignore what the debt collectors says to prioritize payments for you – perhaps the credit card bill is not the most important one when it comes to feeding your family.

Stop contact. You have to right to cease contact with a debt collector. Write a letter to the collector asking them to stop contacting you.

Verify that you owe the money. If the debt amount or any details are incorrect, dispute it.

Sue debt collectors. If the debt collector has violated the law, you have the right to sue them.

Debt Collection Abuses Widespread

BOSTON, July 15 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Debt companies pursuing consumers with a small army of collectors have swamped small claims courts with lawsuits and left a trail of abuses that, in 2009, led consumers to file more than 120,000 complaints with federal regulators.

“The Debt Machine: How the Collection Industry Hounds Consumers and Overwhelms Courts,” released today by the National Consumer Law Center, shows an urgent need for stronger and updated consumer protections.

“The recession has thrown millions of consumers into the jaws of a giant collection machine,” said Robert Hobbs, NCLC deputy director and report co-author. “Existing laws and regulatory efforts have lagged behind what is needed to effectively monitor powerful, wealthy and ubiquitous collections companies.”

“The Debt Machine” tells the stories of consumers who have been dragged into a morass of annoying phone calls, false claims and harassment. It also identifies the financial links between debt companies and some of the nation’s leading banks, documents the buying and selling of billions of dollars of debts and describes the critical role played by hundreds of specialized law firms.

This timely report echoes the FTC’s July 12 call for enhanced protections for consumers who face collections actions in small claims courts and private “forced arbitration” forums.

“Millions of American families have been subjected to debt collection abuses in recent years,” Hobbs said. “Some have been struggling to pay accumulated debts. Some who don’t even owe the debts have been targeted by a sloppy and over-aggressive debt industry.”

“These families – unlike some of the giant banks that are the leading creditors – haven’t asked for a bail-out,” Hobbs added. “But they are entitled to their rights not to be hounded, abused or pursued for claims that they never owed or are no longer legally enforceable. Consumers also deserve their day in court to resolve legitimate disputes.”

The report is posted on-line at www.nclc.org/images/pdf/pr-reports/debt-machine.pdf.

The National Consumer Law Center is a non-profit organization that seeks marketplace justice on behalf of vulnerable Americans. NCLC works with, and offers training to, thousands of legal-service, government and private attorneys, as well as community groups and organizations representing low-income families. Our legal manuals and consumer guides are standards of the field. Learn more and find a link to the new report on our Web site: http://www.nclc.org.

For more information or to arrange an interview, contact Rick Jurgens at or rjurgens@nclc.org.

SOURCE National Consumer Law Center

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Bankruptcy filings on the rise

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — It’s tough out there — no jobs, home values plummeting — and Americans are reacting by heading to bankruptcy court.

Bankruptcy filings surged 14% during the first half of 2010, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute. Filings totaled 770,117 through June, compared to 675,351 during the same period last year.

“Years of rising consumer debt and low savings rates, combined with the housing and unemployment crisis, are causing bankruptcy levels not seen since the 2005,” said Samuel Gerdano, executive director of the institute, in a press release.

In 2005 Congress amended the Bankruptcy Code, making it harder for Americans to file and sparking a rush to file by October of 2005, when the amendments kicked in. In 2005, bankruptcy filings totaled more than 2 million.

By comparison, Gerdano expects there will be more than 1.6 million new bankruptcy filings by the end of 2010.

The institute also said that bankruptcies totaled 126,270 in June, a jump of 8.5% from the same month in 2009, when they totaled 116,365.

The institute relied on data from the National Bankruptcy Research Center for its information. To top of page

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Debt collectors get nasty

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Debt collectors are getting desperate and dirty.

Harassing phone calls, abusive language and physical violence are becoming a bigger part of business as debt collectors struggle to round up money from people who don’t have it.

“The American consumer is really hurting and collectors are having to fight harder to get money,” said Robert Andrews, a senior analyst specializing in the debt industry at research firm IBISWorld.

Complaints of harassment by debt collectors surged 50% to 67,550 in 2009, according to the Federal Trade Commission. And they are on track to jump 13% this year, based on the number of FTC complaints filed in the first six months.

The No. 1 complaint is repeated calls, and it is not uncommon for collectors to bombard consumers with back-to-back calls for days, weeks, months and even years.

When debt collectors finally get someone on the other end of the phone, they are more likely to use nastier language. Complaints of debt collectors using obscene or abusive language spiked 35% last year.

A 55-year old New York woman, who asked to remain anonymous, said a collection agent called her home repeatedly, personally attacking her and her husband. When she refused to answer the phone, the collector called her estranged sister, an ex-boyfriend and her husband’s ex-wife’s mother.

“This guy was out of his mind and he kept calling and calling, telling me ‘you better talk to me, you deadbeat,’” she said. “He was very threatening and the whole thing was just really unsettling — it made you wonder who was going to show up at your door.”

She had reason to worry, since complaints of debt collectors threatening — or actually using — violence more than doubled last year, to 2,517.

Keary Floyd, an attorney who represents consumers at the Floyd Legal Firm in Atlanta, said that while most of his debt collection cases involve excessive phone calls, one of his recent clients recorded a disturbing phone conversation where a debt collector threatened that he or someone else would come to the client’s house to get the money in any way that he could.

“I heard it, and if any phone call was going to worry someone, it would be that one,” said Floyd.

Other aggressive tactics that are becoming more common are debt collectors calling before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m., demanding more money than what is owed, revealing a consumer’s debt to a third party or threatening “dire consequences” like prosecution, jail time, property seizure or job loss.

These practices are not just inappropriate, but they are illegal under the FTC’s Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, which has been around since 1977.
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An industry representative said the increase in complaints of harassment should not only be attributed to desperate and aggressive collecting agents, but to more consumers trying to cash in on lawsuits.

“Certainly if debt collectors are being more aggressive, they shouldn’t be, but it’s not fair to characterize the actions of debt collectors as the only reason why there is an increase in complaints — they’re not fully to blame,” said Mark Schiffman, a spokesman for The Association of Credit and Collection Professionals.

“There’s a growing industry of consumer attorneys and savvy consumers who have learned that they can sue a debt collector fairly easily and collect very easily,” he added.

Consumers are able to take a collector to state or federal court for harassment, according to the FTC. If the debtor wins the case, the collector is required to pay for any damages caused by the harassment, such as lost income and medical bills.

Even if debtors can’t prove monetary damages but are able to prove harassment, they can receive up to $1,000 and are reimbursed for the court and attorney fees.

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Confessions of former debt collectors – Lisa Parker

When you’re collecting debt, it’s dark. It’s not a happy place. The main thing I learned from collecting was that I didn’t want to do it forever.

Collectors have the luxury of having blinders on. They think, if I’m collecting this one debt from you, I don’t have to worry about whether you can put food on the table or pay your electricity or car payments. I have goals internally, and meeting those goals is a big part of my future.

There was a lot of pressure on you, and if you didn’t do well you could lose your job. I felt that I had to say whatever I needed to in order to collect the money, and there were times when I was more aggressive and more assertive than I would have chosen to be. I told people sternly that if a payment was not received, we would have to take away their car, TV or anything else someone wouldn’t want taken out of their house.

I learned that you can have a certain inflection in your voice or use certain words to belittle or demean people, and this is encouraged. We would call family members and neighbors a lot because that’s the best way to intimidate debtors into calling you back.

Needless to say, the self satisfaction from doing this job was minimal, so after a while, the pressure and long hours got to me and I left to do something more than tell people without money to pay this bill “now!”

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Confessions of former debt collectors – Anonomous

Years as a debt collector: 16
Current job: Anonymous

One of the guys in a nearby cubicle called up debtors and posed as a legal counsel. He would tell them to raise their right hand and promise to tell the truth, and then he would drill them with personal questions and badger them, saying throughout the conversation, “Do you still have your right hand raised? You do realize you’re under oath, right?”

He could get away with things like this because most consumers just don’t know their rights.

Collectors constantly called debtors with the intent of harassing and intimidating them. If someone hung up, they would say, “Oh yeah? You’re gonna hang up on me?” and they would call the person right back. It would become a battle.

If a consumer asked to speak with the collector’s supervisor, the agent would simply pass the phone along to the guy sitting next to him, who was likely to be just as abrasive.

I heard so many coworkers call people “good for nothing losers” and tell debtors to “get off your fat a** and go find a job.” They do it because they’re frustrated — they’re trying to make money and pay their own bills, and they’re running into resistance.

I stayed in the business so long because the money was good — I would make about $2,000 a month on top of my base salary — but after a while, I ended up being dismissed because I wasn’t aggressive enough. I was just a kind-hearted person, and I guess that was my downfall.

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