Articles from August 2011

Are there effective debt collection strategies

Debt collection does not work. No business enjoys the process of debt collection. Getting the money may be fun, but the bill collector has to hear any number of excuses about why a person cannot pay his bills.. A number of practices have been used to get debt collection.

Harassing phone calls do not work. Anyone who has been on the receiving end of these calls can tell the user that there are a number of solutions that do not work. Harassing phone calls do not work. The best harassing phone calls do is make a person resent the people trying to collect them even more. Many people facing this form of harassment develop a total avoidance policy with debt collectors. They will hang up, change their phone number, screen their calls or any number of different strategies. Many collection agencies make the mistake of calling the people again after the phone gets slammed down on them. No one feels the need to be polite to a bill collector. People simply want them gone. They usually want the bill collector to die in the most awful manner possible, even if they normally bear no malice toward people.

The second strategy that is doomed to failure is to send nice letters explaining to people that they can pay off an old debt in one lump sum. This lump sum is out of the price range of many people who are in debt. These letters will not be responded to in the way the bill collector expects. The law normally allows the debtor bothered in such a manner back to send a nice letter back explaining in the nicest possible terms that they no longer want the debt collection company to contact them any more. The nicest possible terms is an exaggeration. Most people will explain this in the rudest possible terms.

The best strategy for debt collection is to wait for a debtor or his client to come to the creditor. Some people do this out of a sense of obligation or morality. The reason debt collection seldom works the way people would like it to is many people get into debt because do not know how to handle money.