BEDDING — Inside the Home

Collection One

How to Protect Yourself From Bad Collection Companies

In today's economy, there are many Americans who are dealing with collection agencies. Hate them as much as we do the collection agencies are needed to help collect overdue accounts. If everyone paid their bills on time and in full there would be no need for collection agencies. Like everything else in the world today, there are good and bad collection agencies. Here are some tips to help you recognize the difference and protect yourself from some bad collection practices.

Government has enacted some laws to protect both the consumer and the lender. One law that is specifically designed for debt collection is the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA). The change in the economy has prompted many collection agencies to adopt much rougher collection tactics. The Federal Trade Commission has been dealing with more consumer complaints since 2008. One of the biggest problems that has popped up recently is companies selling debt that could be considered bad debt.

Many companies just sell their bad debt accounts without too much regard to those accounts. This is due to the larger number of accounts that these companies are dealing with. An example would be a consumer who had their identity stolen and the lender sold this account to a collection agency. The consumer provided documentation and information to the original lender showing that this account was not their account. The original lender wrote off the bad debt and corrected the consumers account. But now the lender has sold that account to a collection agency and the collection agency is pursuing the consumer to collect the debt. Some states are beginning to enact laws that will protect consumers against this type of debt collection, making not only the original lender and the collection agency responsible for the negative actions brought to the consumer.

The problem with this type of laws are that some collection agencies may not be able to provide proof of the debt to the consumer and they won't be able to contact the original creditor to gather additional information. This makes it difficult for not only the consumer but also for the company that buys the debt. Collection agencies make money by buying the debt from other companies for pennies on the dollar. For example they might buy a debt for $5.00 and trying to collect $100.00 from the consumer. As you can see it does not take too many accounts for a collection agency to make money. The original creditor tries to collect the debt for as long as it makes sense to try. Once it makes it difficult to collect they sell the account to a collection agency.

Collection agencies are trying much harder to collect any debt. Many creditors and collection agencies are able to sue any consumer who has failed to pay their debt. But they must be careful because many states have a statute of limitations that creditors and collection agencies must make the attempt to collect the debt before the limitations have expired. So if you have any collection accounts you may want to investigate what the statute of limitations are in the state you live in. Many companies will stop pursuing any collection accounts that have gone beyond the statute of limitations. The problem is they may sell the account to another collection agency and this process will start all over again.

Be sure you have complete documentation to support any accounts that have either past their statute of limitations or were discharged in court with a bankruptcy. Bankruptcies open up a whole new can of worms. If a company attempts to collect a discharged debt they are in violation of the U.S. Bankruptcy code. This is a whole new problem if the account has been sold to several different companies.

Here are some suggestions of changes that should be made to make debt collection much easier for the collectors and the consumers. Each debt must have proper documentation and been given each time but debt is sold. Prohibit the sale of improper debt and penalties if such a sale is made. Provide the FTC the ability to make the rules that the creditors and consumers must follow. These three simple suggestions are the only way that debt collection will be handled properly.

Since most of the suggestions will hurt the creditors or cost them more money, they are less willing to have those changes enacted. Consumers must protect themselves by knowing what laws are affecting them. Working directly with your senators and representatives regarding debt collection could possibly help in getting new laws passed. I personally believe that any bad debt that is going to be sold must have proper documentation. It should include debt amount and documentation to support that amount, it should also have been date that would be the beginning of the collection account so that each collection agency can see if the account is within the statute of limitations.

This information can benefit you as the consumer if you have any accounts that are considered collection accounts. Do not avoid talking with collectors or dealing with collection agencies. You might be able to resolve your problem and get the problem fixed. This could help how the information is being reported to your credit history report. Resol

Now Pay Close Attention --

One bad mark on your credit report can ruin your score. But now there are two reasons you don't have to suffer through a bad credit score:

[Reason #1] Under FACTA, you have the right to obtain one FREE COPY of your credit report from each of the three major credit bureaus every 12 months.

[Reason #2] With FREE Triple Safeguard Credit Monitoring with email alerts, you'll stay in touch with your creadit report for free.

My Free Credit Reports has been providing free credit reports and scores from all three major credit bureaus since 1997. And FREE Triple Safeguard Credit Monitoring has been tried and tested and known to produce excellent results.

First: Click Here To Visit My Free Credit Reports
View Your Scores & Reports Free Within 6 Minutes From Now!

Second: Sign Up For FREE Triple Safeguard Credit Monitoring
Most importantly unlike other monitoring systems there is no cost involved! You never need to pay anything!

About the Author

You are literally seconds away from discovering My Free Credit Reports. You have the right to obtain one FREE COPY of your credit report from each of the three major credit bureaus every 12 months. And with FREE Triple Safeguard Credit Monitoring with email alerts, you'll stay in touch with your creadit report for free. Visit: http://www.MyFreeCreditReports.org and obtain your one FREE COPY of your Free Credit Report from each of the three major credit bureaus for free.

How does one start up a collection business?

My brother and I have been in the collection business (working for well known successful companies) and now want to venture out on our own. Can anyone advise us on how we may start? We're both extraordinary collectors but lack the knowledge of buying paper and initiating the business itself. We live in Las Vegas by the way.

You need businesses to hire you. Can you steal any clients from the place where you work now. I'm sure setting up an office and getting phones is easy, but finding customers to supply you with "cases" will be the big challenge.

THE LAZER COLLECTION

Tags: collection one night stands, collection one step, design, free, guitar collection one utama, noble collection one ring, reference, tools, webdesign, zatoichi collection one

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 21st, 2009 at 10:47 am and is filed under bedding. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.