imadebtcollector

Thinking about the old grind.

2009-05-04T10:42:00.000-07:00

Every so often someone asks me if I'm still doing the collector gig. I say no, followed with a hopefully never again! BUT, the information I culled from the job will remain forever valuable. Knowing not just how to, but when to negotiate is a rockin' good thing! Debtors for the most part are not good negotiators. And maybe that's one of the reasons they are in a financial bind. ??? Something else I got from the job was that no matter how repetitious, tedious, menial a job might be, distill something new from each eight hour block that you traded for your paycheck. Because those eight hours... you're never gonna get em' back.

Noncompliance

2008-12-03T22:03:00.000-08:00

The grueling repetition of the forty hour grind beats you down. Change that - it beat me down. I'm able to do the routine for a while... eventually I take hours to get my ass out of bed and my mind in a proper frame. There are days when my attitude stays sour until well after lunch. Some days it stays bad.

When I was a wilderness instructor for troubled teens I could always fall back on the satisfaction of knowing that "natural consequences" would prevail and instill in the student a desire to comply. If you don't set up a proper shelter you'll get wet when it rains. If you don't tie your bedroll properly it will unroll and then you will be mad. At yourself. I didn't have the luxury of "natural consequences" at the collection job. The law states that you can't threaten to do something that is not possible.... I can't tell someone I'm going to have them thrown in jail for not paying their bill because I don't have that sort of clout. But if my company owns the debt, and has every intention of following through with legal action I can state the facts - which more often than not is called a threat. Okay then. I rarely found out if legal action was being persued against someone. For me, there was no closure, I was left hanging.

Remembering the special times sitting in my beige cube. A sigh of relief. I am glad that I am a debt collector no more. Especially in this economy.

So Over It

2008-09-15T11:31:00.000-07:00

Done. Amazing how habits set in and we don't notice. Get up, go to work. Repeat. Sometimes it's best to just say no and get off the hamster wheel. I transferred to the "arbitration department" hoping for variety and a little compliance from the "clients". Alas it was not to be. There are a lot of... lets be kind here... stubborn people out there that won't fulfill their obligations voluntarily. Some need calls and letters... some need a bigger nudge.... like a summons to appear in court. These same folks think they don't have to show up? I don't have the patience or motivation to be a successful debt collector. Money is not enough of a motivator for me to sit on my ever-enlarging ass in a beige office and be verbally abused by stupid people.

A couple years ago I ran the last ten miles of a marathon next to a woman that used to work as a drug dependency counselor. Asked her why she stopped doing it... her first reason was she got married to a patent attorney and didn't need to work anymore. Second reason ---- the job became BORING! After doing it for a few years she got bored with listening to the same excuses all the time. Same with collections.... it took a while, but it got BORING. I'm sick, my parents are sick, my kids are sick. Got fired, got laid off, plant closed. Husband/girlfriend/sister/parent stole my identity and ran up this bill. Getting divorced, husband died. Katrina. House burned down. Whatever. The last event shared with me was the woman in the wheelchair that couldn't work.... so why are you in a wheelchair? She was driving and dropped her cell phone and ran into a tree.

The tiny tidbits served up over the phone just whet the appetite. The google machine is the msg sprinkled on top making things more savory. And lastly is your imagination to fill in any blanks.

You can't predict the future.

Long Dry Spell

2008-07-16T10:28:00.000-07:00

Tedium has set in... dial the phone. leave a message. repeat. wait for my phone not to ring.

But had a small bit of entertainment the other morning.... I call one of my numbers and some guy answers the phone - sounds like he woke up, rolled over and picked up the receiver. Ask him if he's the guy I'm looking for and he says yes. Being from the midwest the next thing you have to ask is how someone's doing.. apparently this guy is doing just fine... he informs me he could bust up cinderblocks with his hard-on.

Awesome. I was not quite left speechless.

Where's the Funny?

2008-05-27T09:49:00.000-07:00

Not a good sign... the last week or two I've been unable to find any funniness in my job. AND THAT IS SO NOT OK!
The fruits of the phone are not being reaped. I rarely talk to anyone. I listen to fax machines, busy signals and tepid, banal messages on answering machines.
I know the tide will turn... the dude who had the cube next to me got an awesome phone message last week. The debtor calls back after the Sunday morning church service. All she says is "Mr. Bill Collector, you are THE DEVIL." click. Then she calls back with the second half, says while she was at church that morning, she had rebuked the devil and then she apologized for saying he was the devil. What she meant was that he was possessed by the devil and she would be willing to help drive the devil out of his body. How come I'm not getting any of that shit? Damn.

The Logic Astounds Me

2008-05-15T10:19:00.000-07:00

I love the "not my fault" calls...

THEY shouldn't have lent me the money...
THEY knew I didn't have a job when THEY gave me the credit card.
THEY knew I couldnt pay it back, so I shouldnt have to.

This chick was a true piece of work... I'm looking at her account.. appears to be an overdrawn checkbook. I get her on the phone and she tells me about the day she goes to the cash machine to get $20 for her baby's daddy.... she takes out the $20 and sees a balance of over $3000 on the receipt. So she takes out as much as she can at the cash machine and then writes a couple thousand dollars worth of checks against the rest. Common sense tells the majority of us that those extra zeros on the balance will go away as fast as they appeared. Now this chick is all balled up about me calling her asking her to cover all the bad checks she wrote. "Shit, the bank gave me the money and I don't have to give it back, it's the bank's mistake!!"

And I never get the satisfaction of seeing the sheriff roll in on the workplace or see the look on the dude's face after we clean out his checking account. Lots of strokin' but I never get the happy ending. Maybe I should switch to the legal department.

Stimulus Rebate Schedule

2008-04-29T16:43:00.000-07:00

Uncle Sam, when am I gonna get my money?

http://www.irs.gov/irs/article/0,,id=180250,00.html

Spend responsibly - pay down your credit cards... don't give the credit card companies any more money than you have to.

End of the Month

2008-04-29T15:33:00.000-07:00

Apparently I was in a bad mood yesterday.... LORDY,this job is a bit of a downer.

Hold yourself accountable and give just a little thought to what you spend your money on.

How much thought, energy and money goes into the advertising we are bombarded with? So maybe put a little bit of thought into your purchases before you throw down the plastic....

Five awesome questions to ask yourself when you're pulling out your wallet...

DO I NEED IT?
WHAT WILL I DO WITH IT?
WHERE WILL I PUT IT?
WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF I WAIT TO BUY IT?
HOW WILL I PAY FOR IT?

Thank you Eric Bogosian

2008-04-28T13:14:00.000-07:00

I feel like an absolute nag today... how many messages do I have to leave for you to not return? I can't get my head around the procrastination part of the debt thing --- or maybe it's the "bury my head in the sand and ignore my situation even though I'm reminded every time the phone rings." Probably a short-term memory loss thing - blame it on that time when you rolled off the bed when you were three. It's you mom's fault.

If only I could leave the messages I really want to leave. Starting with "Yoo hoo, man up and pick up the receiver and at the very least tell me what the hell is going on". I know something happened because it's a rare person that just decides to stop paying a bill. But please stop skirting the issue... face the problem and start looking for ways to solve it instead of wallowing in self-pity. However bad your life is - someone has it worse.

Collectors have a bad rap and that's unfortunate because the collector is situated to save you money. I know it's all about personality - if you don't like me, you ain't gonna pay me. And I'll bet dollars to donuts you don't like any collectors! So you'll cut off your nose to spite your face, you'll refuse to return calls claiming you never return calls to numbers you don't recognize. Then you get mad when we call you at work. And you won't verify your home address. And then you get mad when you get served at work and wind up with a wage garnishment.

I'm trying to rewrite this profanity-laden post and I am boring myself. I'm burned out and am resenting my time there. I was initially attracted to the job like a bad car accident but the blood and gore eventually becomes pedestrian. I think paramedics would say the same thing.

Frustrated. Here I sit in a position to settle out accounts for fifty cents on the dollar and no one is willing to answer the phone or return calls. Why? Tell me, I want to know. Really.

Do people think that if the debt collector stops calling then the debt goes away? So if I stop giving myself breast exams, I can forget about the lump I felt and I can stop thinking about the cancer I might have. OK then. That would be the power of retarded thinking.

A nod to Mr. Bogosian for his kickass book title: "Pounding Nails in the Floor With My Forehead" because today is one of those days. And the book was as good as the title. EB, thank you, you rock.

The Lost Art of Creative Name-Calling

2008-04-10T07:48:00.000-07:00

When I first started as a collector the hours flew by - I didn't have a clue what the fuck I was doing and would wind up talking to the freakiest people... that would be both in the office and on the phone. I started my "career" in collections at a young, just born, collection company... so the paper we were collecting was the bottom of the barrel. Crap like delinquent health club memberships, cell phones and cable tv accounts. The shit that everyone on the planet walks away from. Fuck Ballys, fuck the Dish, fuck Verizon. And fuck Fingerhut ---- no shit you can get a charge account with Fingerhut... which reminds me I had a boyfriend a longass time ago that was a computer geek - did some sort of database whatnot. But he comes home one day - he'd been working his geeky magic at the Hut and first thing he says is "Hey, guess who bought a voice disguiser at F-Hut?" How the fuck would I know... please tell me, oh master of the the data and finder of the valuable bits of info, who bought the voice disguiser? "Jeffery Dahmer" Weird shit eh?

So back on the subject of collections...new collectors get the super shitty accounts. Therefore, the conversations you wind up having tend to be on the "I can't believe I'm hearing this shit come out of someone's mouth" end of the spectrum. I get this account and first time I call it, the guy on the other end picks up and doesn't even say hello but lets loose with a most awesome stream of profanity... fuckyouyoupiceofshitcuntfromhellgofuckyourselfandthehorseyourodeinonandyourmothertoo. click. Hmm, what to do.... must put this one on the "remember to call everyday list". And so we eventually get the conversation to be a bit less one-sided... and I also wind up chatting with the dude's dad... dude is 53 years old and lives in his dad's basement. Damn, that is hot. I want a boyfriend that lives in his dad's basement and doensn't pay his bills.... sadly it never worked out between us. Our last conversation ended with some creative name-calling on his part. He told me my pussy was soooo big that he could drive his truck into it and turn around and not bump into the sides.... and finished off the insult calling me "big, fat 'gina lips" and hung up.

And now that I've been performing the task of calling debtors for a couple years, I've moved up to supposedly better accounts. All that really means is when I talk to someone they have predictable tales of woe to tell.... boring boring boring. I much prefer calling the inbred cousin-fuckers that had their double-wides repoed. Make that six-fingered, triple-nippled, inbred, cousin-fuckers.

That shit you read in the paper.... somebody's related to those people

2008-04-09T10:45:00.000-07:00

Just got off the phone with a woman in northern California... owns a nice piece of property up near the Oregon border... having trouble making mortgage payments. Asked her what was going on and what changed in the last six months... shes on disability and gets less than $1000/month. She tells me her "old man" got sent to jail... while I've got someone on the phone, I'm searching for additional info on the internet - mostly out of curiousity but also to bust someone when they say no one can help them pay the bills.... asked her how long he was gonna be locked up - she said 30-35 years..... hmmmmm, must investigate..... I hate finding shit like this.... child molestation and child pornography --- fucking pedophiles - one was mayor of a town in some state out east and active in boyscouts and the church choir. Last week I helped a collector find a debtor but wound up talking to the debtor's father.... debtor not gonna pay any time soon, picked up a life sentence...stabbed a roommate seventy five times, and then used a baseball bat to finish the job - happened in a trailer park down south somewhere. Weird shit that you come in contact with at this freakass job.... who knows what the fuck is going to be on the other end of the phone.

What Would You Do?

2008-04-08T05:46:00.000-07:00

Could a debt collector be described as part sleuth, part psychologist, part counsellor and part vigilante, or what would be your description?

Thanks for the question. Depends on the collector ---- there are a lot of "knuckle draggers" out there that only know how to dial a phone - barely. Because of the "shit roles downhill" atmosphere at many collection agencies, the managers beat up collectors and collectors beat up debtors... definitely not one of those sunshine and lollipop jobs. But you are correct in your choice of words. If you can't get a debtor on the phone you can't ask 'em to pay ---- so sleuth comes first. Once you get 'em on the phone you have to convince them to pay (if they have the resources or the will) that's the psychologist part. And being the bodiless voice on the phone, a collector can become a therapist - that's me most of the time - because I'm not really here for the money anyway. I'll never be an outstanding collector because I have too much of a conscience - I'm a bit of a softy. I have listened to so many people cry - I can't bang those people up. I've talked to people that have had to recently bury their spouses or worse, their children, the siblings of murderers and spouses of child molesters, I've had debtors go into court-appointed drug treatment and I've had a debtor commit suicide a couple days after my last conversation with her ---she was a in her 50's, she had been hospitalized for depression for six months previous and had been out of the hospital a couple months before I called her. I was trying to collect a $10,000 credit card. She and her husband lived in a $500,000 condo in southern California - and they had a second condo that had been sold recently. Big tax liens that had recently been paid off and some other credit cards, $40k worth that had been settled recently. During our couple conversations (which were close to an hour each) she said she had given the money from the condo sale to her husband to pay everything off. She also mentioned her husband spent a lot of money on his "obsession" and she had big issues with the debt load they had. She felt their debt load was part of the cause of her depression. I googled her husband and his obsession is "wreck diving" not just off the California coast but all over the world. the second time I spoke with her a week later was on a Saturday morning and she didn't really say much during our call, she just cried.... and talked about how sad she was and that she wanted to die and that she had thought about taking pills to do it. I asked her if she had talked to her husband about how she felt and she said no, he didn't understand. I told her to do a couple different things - hold your grandchild and tell her you love her, go outside and get some exercise, think of one thing every day that you like to do... shit, I don't have the tools to handle stuff like this.... previous to this I'd only had face-to-face situations where people talked about committing suicide - never on the phone. And fuck, talking to someone that wants to die is not an easy place to be. I'm guessing it would freak out a lot of folks. So I asked her if there was someone she might want me to call or was there something she wanted me to do. She said no and I told her I was worried about her and would call her in a couple days.

The next day there was a voice mail message from her giving the name of an attorney that she asked me to call - said he was taking care of finding out if the credit card I was calling about had been paid along with all the others. I called the attorney and told him about the conversations I had had with the debtor and that I was worried about her. The next week, the account was "recalled" meaning it was either recalled by the original creditor or sold to another collection agency so I was done with it and I moved on to a new batch of accounts....

Sometimes when I'm at work a particular debtor's name pops into my head so I pull up the account. Sometimes closed, sometimes not. Then I throw the social security number into a search engine to see if they've moved.... so I'm thinking about the Saturday morning when I talked to the suicidal woman and I toss her name into mix, there's a red D next to her name. The D means a death has been verified and when you have your cursor over the D the death date appears in a pop-up. I'm sure I spoke to her after the date that appears... so I pull up the collection account and see that I spoke to her a couple days before she died.

I told you not to call me

2008-04-04T11:15:00.000-07:00

So you're getting calls from collections... how many of you have picked up the phone and yelled "stop harrassing me" and hung up? Put you hands up high where I can see them.... hmmmm, lots more than I thought. So what did that solve? All you did was get mad and yell...feel better now? Did the calls stop? Didn't think so. There is only one state where the consumer has the power to verbally cease a collector from calling your home number. Otherwise, you have to request the calls to be stopped in writing. Is that so hard? Apparently it is because many a consumer threatens to do it but very few follow through. Just remember, by not talking to the collector you lose the opportunity to negotiate a payment schedule or settlement amount. Why would you want to pay the full amount if you didn't have to? This is the first time I will say this: ALL DEBT IS NEGOTIABLE. And the time that it is most negotiable is the end of the month. Collections is comission-based, just like car sales.... and the best time to buy a car is the end of the month... get it? But if you act like a dickweed and sling shit at the collector working your account he will look for ways to fuck you. If you are nasty enough, the collector will be hoping to leave you naked and bleeding like Jeffrey Dahmer's last boyfriend. But then I have a suspicion this scenario pertains to just about anyone that works the phone beat in cube land. So try to find it in yourself to be civil to that bodyless voice - I know it's hard, but nice works.

Now lets move on to the crazy, neanderthal, knuckle-draggers out there.... meaning the collectors, not the debtors... there is legal protection out there for consumers, its name is FDCPA. Google it, wiki it. And if you feel you need legal assistance look for a consumer rights attorney, they will tell you if you've got a case.

It's a shit world out there -- for everyone. But I'm not gonna throw a pity-party and don't send me an invitation if you're planning one. Debtors, just try to pull yourself together enough to deal with your problems and collectors, don't kick someone when they're down cuz the tables are gonna turn some day.

And remember why you've got two ears and one month.

When Pigs Fly

2008-04-03T12:27:00.000-07:00

So what do you all know about the world of debt collecting and debt collectors? The job doesn't totally suck but it's definately down there with porta-potty cleaner and hospital housekeeping aide. All of them involve a lot of shit.

So why do I do it? I am reminded every day that I am just one catastrophic event away from being destitute. That's the majority of what I experience every day... people getting divorced, people with chronic medical conditions that can't work, people that have just lost a grip and given up - sometimes with good reason, sometimes not.

Today I'm an optimist and believe the majority, meaning 99% of people that wind up in collections, sincerely want to pay their bills.... yeah, and the American public sincerely wants to lose weight. Really. Unfortunately, they also what to procrastinate and prolong the pain of owing money. Do people not understand that neglected bills can and do become judgements, wage garnishments and property leins? I don't like being the bearer of bad news but that mysterious lump in your neck is eventually going to kick your ass and then you will be sad.

And just because your life went to hell in a handcart you're entitled to throw in the towel and say "fuck it" to your finances??? That's why they came and took your car last night. That's why the bank is telling you need to move and become a renter again. That's why you credit card was refused at Target last night. Did you bother to call one single creditor to tell them that right now, you are totally fucked financially and that the only reason you have two nickels to rub together is because you stole them off you dead mother's eyes?

How many letters did you ignore before the calls started? And how many calls have you not returned?

All you have to do is return my calls and tell me all about the shitstorm that is your life and I'll stop calling. And hopefully during that call you might listen to my advice and start making small payments on your account. If not, I don't have a whole lot of control over what happens next. If you're a dick to me I'll send the account to the legal department and they can have their way with you. If you think you are sad now, you will be more sad later - just can't say when.

Remember, the calls might go away but the debt doesn't.