While this is true, things happen, and weird things like, not getting mailed statements, weird bills coming out of the blue happen too, you don’t want to get fucked over.
I will never, and plan on never taking out a loan for anything (house excluded) or using a credit card unless it is an emergency. This is what I get from having a father who runs a bank.
This is clearly a debt that he disputes, not just a regular bill.
People should pay (and are legally obligated to pay) legitimate debts. If a debt is legitimate, then the collection agency can easily comply with your request to validate it, and you are then obligated to pay them or face a court judgment that will force you to pay them.
However, there are a lot of collection agencies in the US that engage in some very shady (or downright illegal) practices, such as inflating debts beyond what they should actually be, or even “fishing” for debts, in which they acquire lists of debts where the creditor (often another collection agency) has no contact information for the debtor. The collection agency then starts targeting anyone they can find with the same name as what is on the debt, and tries to collect. Apparently, a fair percentage of people can be intimidated into paying debts that they never incurred in this fashion.
This actually happened to me a few years ago; a collection agency in Chicago tried to collect on a fictitious debt. They wouldn’t tell me what it was for, and when I asked them to validate it (after doing some research on the various laws covering debt collection), they just resent the same invoice that they had sent me originally, which basically had no information about the debt or how it was calculated, or even who the original creditor was. I then told them to fuck off (politely, and in writing), and proceeded to report them to the NY Attorney General, the FTC, and the Chicago Better Business Bureau (who apparently had a long list of unresolved complaints for this agency). I forwarded copies of all of these reports that I filed to the agency. Very shortly after that, they informed me that they had determined that the debt was in error, and that they had removed it from their records.
The thing is, even if you actually do owe a debt, that doesn’t give your creditors the right to shake you down for more than you legally owe. If nutsak thinks the total on his debt is dodgy, then he should find out what his rights are, and exercise them.
Good luck getting a loan for a house without a credit history. I learned that one the hard way.
The fact that debt collection agencies are morally only one step above concentration camp guards and the fact that people should pay their debts are unrelated. Yeah, people should pay their debts, no argument at all from me on that one. But once in the cross hairs of a collection agency, they should also be prepared to defend themselves against some shady practices, intimidation attempts, and general shitfuckery.
How will this effect your credit if you do not pay? How will effect your ability to get a loan? Buy a car? Buy a house?
What is their legal recourse?
Good luck getting a loan for a house without a credit history. I learned that one the hard way.
Find a mortgage broker who does manual underwriting and doesn’t just look at a credit score and compare it to a number taped to their cubicle wall.
It must be awesome watching you buy a car.
http://www.acainternational.org/about.aspx?cid=9187
If this is true, they’d have to take you to court to make you pay:
http://www.worldlink-law.com/businfo/australia/debtcollection.htm
Why?
5
Really, it’s about the same thing. There’s a kernel of a real business transaction in there hidden in a pile of sleaze.
Uh. What? You swapped out what I actually wrote for a bunch of stuff I didn’t write, and are calling me on it. Did you hit your head recently, Mr. Strawman?
His father runs a bank. I’m sure he’ll be fine.
It’s the fact that she believes that the company she works for has a legal right to charge me interest for a debt they bought.
:edit: Now I’m really wondering what the fuck is going on. This phone number she gave me to contact her on ( It’s a 1800 number ) does not match any contact numbers on the company’s website and it’s not listed in the phone book.
It’s a joke analogy.
If that is the extent of the question, why would that come as a surprise to you? Why wouldn’t they be able to charge you interest on the debt they bought? Consumer debt provisions typically have a late payment interest trigger provisions - so long as it is not usurious, it’s generally enforceable I think.
Why wouldn’t it be - why should you get a free credit float on debt? Any amount outstanding that is owed by you is really the same thing as a loan - it’s why companies are so concerned with the time period on collecting their receivables and paying their payables.
Bear in mind that I’m not saying the debt collector is not lying, or that they might not be trying to squeeze more out of you than they are entitled to.
I am just not sure why you would quibble that they might have a right to interest on the debt.
Because there’s people less fortunate than me and bumping up the amount of debt equates to a lack of duty of care for the consumer ( It’d be like if a bank increased your limit on your credit card without telling you and you spent it but the amount was outside of your bounds to pay ).
In Australia we have laws that debt collection agencies must obey unless they really like being fined ( 220k for staff, 1.1m for companies ).
Okay, so it is a morality/ethics argument less than a, “It’s against this specific law,” type of argument. I did not get where you were coming from.
In the U.S. we have laws that debt collection agencies must obey as well, but they do not amount to an absolute prohibition on interest being payable on a debt.
In the U.S., that kind of interest on a consumer/personal debt might also be usurious in many states, but that also has nothing to do with debt collectors, just with whether the terms of the debt were usurious.
Don’t call them back, whatever you do. Don’t make contact with them in any way until they send you something in the mail. If they call you, say “please contact me via postal mail, thank you” and immediately hang up.
Maybe Qt3 can come up with a shorthand for this endlessly entertaining joke analogy “changing the quoted post” posting style. Something like, “I’m lazy and derivative!” You’ll never have to explain what you’re doing again.