The Truth of Credit

One of the most frustrating parts of my job is the amount of lies that I’m told on a daily basis. While popular opinion is the debt collectors lie and break the law to get paid, if you only knew the caliber of some of the people on the other end of the phone you would see that it goes both ways. In all honesty, I have more respect for the people who never pickup the phone than the people that blatantly lie or constantly bounce checks. Here is a list of my Top 3 Stalls and how we the debt collectors view them.

1. “I’ll pay you when I have the money” - It’s great that you take responsibility for the debt but when you agree to pay monthly and don’t that’s not acceptable. Don’t be annoyed that people are calling when you have this attitude.

2. “Send me proof of the debt” - Now, I understand full well people have the right to dispute charges. However, if you have made payments for 10 years without question and then suddenly are not able to and have stopped, we all know you have no need to dispute the charges.  This is the ultimate stalls of all stalls.

3. “I need to speak with my spouse” - I love this one because it shows a lot about the individual. If you can’t make a decision about your own finances, then credit card debt is the least of your problems.  I know that in some households one person is in charge of finances but if you have no clue as to what kind of payment you can afford to make, then some changes need to be made.

The TRUTH is that some people have a lot more creative stalls than others. However, all they do is delay fixing the problem; kind of like what the U.S. government has done with Social Security.  I digress, as a collector my job is 1first to get paid and second to provoke action. Time, in the end, is always more valuable than money.  If your credit means something to you, the longer you wait to fix the problem the more it’s going to cost you to stay on the sideline.

Stop Stalling!

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