How the 3rd party collection field has changed.

10+ years ago I was a collector for a 3rd party agency. I was very successful doing this. We followed the FDCPA as we were trained on it and also all state laws. If we were caught violating we were fired. Then we would skiptrace mainly with other creditors. We would be able to leave one message with what we called a "MULT" (or relitive) and one neighbor. We could not call them if we had a verifible phone number. If we were told not to call them anymore we took the phone out.

I am now seeing the other side. All I got to say is that it has changed. I have had Attorneys and collectors call family members who they are getting as "mults" and leave messages. So far I have not had any neighbors tell me they have called them. They call nonstop 4-5x a day. We could call maybe 1-2x a day. I know now that dialers do most of the calling but our dialer would not call a number that much. It is amazing how things have changed.

We would not have this many complaints if agencies and attorneys jsut follow the rules. Sure you would have some but they would be minimal. My 1st manager told me my goal was to be the debtors favorite collector. They will pay you first. It worked. How many collectors now can say that?

I have no experience with collectors beyond getting called (endlessly) for people I do not know and have never heard of--in my case, since 2008 for the same woman--but it  seems even the pretext of ethical conduct has evaporated.   Now violating the law has become the standard business model for collections, not the rare exception.   Utterly devoid of morals, they seem  willing to  do anything they can get away with.

The business of the US Government is to get re-elected. One year into a four year term, it's a stream of rubber chicken dinner fundraisers, and business knows it. Wall Street, Banks and business know there is no enforcement, or at least nothing a little lobbying can't cure. If there is no money for schools, roads or food safety, why would there be any for debt laws? Even when they are caught, it's "admit no fault", pay a small fine & then business as usual. I do not see this situation changing.

Welcome, collector refugee with a rarely heard rational voice. I hope you'll visit again to offer your perspective. We take so much noise here from current collection reps and their jeer-leaders, whose disdain for the disadvantaged was taught to them by management. Some take extra credit courses in prison to cultivate the proper predatory attitude.

Elsewhere I've heard an axiom to the effect that you will pay a friend long before you pay an enemy. The issue we have now is that computer networks have simplified what in your time was more prohibitively difficult and costly. Mainly I refer to the vigorous traffic in moldy past-SoL accounts and unverifiable debts, which has led logically to simply making s&!t up and calling it "debt".

Being nice doesn't work when there is no good reason to pay, so your descendants rely on shame and extortion, made semi-legitimate and assisted too often by a slanted court system. If you can get a lady on the phone to faint in terror or get a judge to scare her for you, the debt claim doesn't need to be realistic. It only needs to be convincing.

I'm curious if "MULT" as a term for "family relative" was an acronym or an abbreviation, and if you had a term for a non-related person who is not a neighbor.

"10+ years ago I was a collector for a 3rd party agency. I was very successful doing this. We followed the FDCPA as we were trained on it and also all state laws."

While it's not impossible that you were the one, shining exception, I can tell you that, according to my experience, 3rd party collections is the exact same cess pool now as it was then.

Nearly 20 years ago, I - won't go into all of the reasons why - filed for bankruptcy and actually received this discharge.  No creditors attended my meeting of creditors, all who were included in my mailing matrix were included in the bankruptcy, all acted as though they had received the notice given that they all quit calling me and sending me notices.  

A year AFTER my bankruptcy, I was approached in person, while at school - I was in graduate school at that time - by a bill collector.  He told me his name, that he was a 'data architect' living the good life in Silicon Valley, and would give me a full time job to pay off all of my creditors if I would concede that I actually still owed the debts that had legitimately been discharged.  I told him to go take a hike.  He PUSHED me.  I reported him to campus security.  I never saw him again.  A couple of months later, however, I was contacted by city police who wanted to talk to me about this individual.  It seems that they suspected that this 'pillar of society' was wanted for questioning in the matter of some bomb threats.

But that's nothing compared to what I put up with before filing for bankruptcy - 3rd party collectors, on more than one occasion and calling for different debts, threatened to have me killed, maimed, raped, and various other methods of assault.  I was barraged with contact from people with whom I had no meaningful relationship from my past, a part-time Pharmacist from a drug store where I'd clerked some 15 years prior, a woman who worked at a temporary employment agency that had sent me out on some temporary job assignments nearly 10 years prior, a couple of cousins of my ex-spouse (we'd been divorced for 7 years by the time of these calls) to name a few, who all reported that various 'lawyers' and 'members of law enforcement' were looking for me, mentioning that I was 'wanted for some debts.'  

How any of this differs from what goes on today is so far beyond me that the mere suggestion that things have somehow changed is nothing short of absurd.

Thanks Res47.. I actually have posted on this as different names. MULT meant "multiple people with the same last name in the area of the debtor." A neighbor was actually known as "NEARBY."

I agree with the computers doing the calling. It takes the one on one relationship out. I help many a people pay off a debt. Some said thank you. I also had those that could not pay. I did not waste my time on those. Now they do not care (companies). They want the $$ no matter how. We could not recommend a suit on someone unless they owned propererty and we verified they had a job and a postive income. We did not waste money on lawsuits.

It would be hard to argue that the perception of change rests in the severity of offenses. The FDCPA turns 35 this September, and most of it has stayed remarkably relevant. It says three times over that what it considers violative covers a broad range of behavior, just before listing specific actions. If you view the Act as a response to its era, you can see in those particulars how the inmates must have run the asylum: foul language, violent bodily threats, extortionist threats, public shaming, harassment, ambushing debtors, lying about identity, lying about debt claims, overcollecting accounts .... things we are *still* talking about now.

Alfalfa gave us perspective in another thread a half year ago, describing how things worked circa 1970:

"... my parents were being harassed literally 24/7 by a "law office" collecting for a Standard Oil credit card, which had been paid in full. ....
I have vivid memories of the phone ringing at all hours of the day and night from bill collectors. My parents went through a very difficult period prior to 1977. Both of them had been sick and unable to work, with mounting medical debts. It got so bad that they had to take the phone off the hook, to get any sleep, The calls finally stopped--but only after they filed for bankruptcy."

If there is change to chart, I think it's found in several factors:
- the proliferation of those horrid tactics
- the entry of more players across a lower startup barrier
- the coordinated diffusion of violations among small shops linked by a single debt buyer
- the emergence of a global fake debt market
- industry consolidation to hike up the volume of accounts in play
- the greater ease with which decedent debt, discharged debt, past-stat debt and other such carrion scraps can be cataloged and traded like chewing gum cards

All of the above can be traced back to the efficiencies afforded by computer networks, computer control of operations, and cheap phone service. The hostile collections rep of the past was just as nasty working from a rotary phone and a pile of manilla folders, but every action took human labor and a human decision. I would argue that the menace has been a constant but the volume of abuses has risen with the volume of debt accounts in play.

One last contributor to change is itself a constant. The FDCPA statutory award cap is a ridiculous bargain while it remains frozen at 1977 prices.

Ah, I was aware of the "nearby" term from discussion of the "block party" practice of calling everyone within a person's home radius. A "mult" is not strictly a relative, only a guess that a call recipient is one.

You can imagine how swell it feels to be pigeonholed and stalked instead of treated like a thinking adult. That as you've seen is the current definition of "skip trace", conducted usually to create shame and urgency. Repeated pelting of non-debtors is made maddeningly legal by the "faulty data" provision, which did not anticipate all the databases now available for targeting a person and her assets. To paint the behavior as illegal means to get the agency reps to admit they knew exactly how to reach the alleged debtor from the first moment the account file was opened. Perhaps you can offer an idea of how to extract that admission without a cattle prod.

From the "collectors" now say when you approach them on why they called your family members are the following:

1. We have not reached you. Meanwhile my answering machine states you reched me with my last name. This here is illegal to leave a message at another phone # when you have one. You can call and probe but that is it.

2. I had an attorney call family members and tell them that they are calling from an attorney office and need to talk to me. The family members they called were not listed as any references.

As you see they have "excuses" and if a complaint happens they will dig these out. I complained on a collector who called our # 3 times within 5 minutes leaving one message. I picked it up on the 3rd time and got his info. I asked why call 3x in a row. He stated he did not relalize he did. When they got the complaint "their records" only showed 2 calls and they admitted to that. I rebutted to their answer but have not heard back.

As you can see they can manipulate their info to make them look better.

I feel the "Rachel" calls and other "robocalls" are from companies who "verify" a person at certain number. The agency I worked at bought info from a a company who would send mailers out to people to see if a forwarding address came back or other info (ie person does not live here anymore) so that we can start skiptracing on the debtor quicker. You can search your name and find your family members names and numbers on websites. I just found one and requested my name to be taken off. It is funny that they call the same family members all the time. That website was www.spokeo.com. I have done this a couple times.
This is just a thought.

What is so astonishing to me is why these rogue collectors are not being prosecuted and sent to prison for making terroristic threats. I remember reading more than once a statement in my phone carrier's white and yellow pages making it abundantly clear that using a phone device to make such calls is a violation of Federal law and is punishable by up to five years in prison and thousands of dollars in fines. If this is still
true, then why aren't the phone companies doing anything about it? Their culpability in this epidemic of phone abuse by debt collectors and telemarketers is telling, for I have read over and over again where people have reported these calls to their phone carriers--only to be told there is "nothing they can do about it". They only seem interested in generating revenue from assigning more and more phone numbers to these organized criminals and collecting fees from victims to change their phone numbers or block the numbers.

"As you can see they can manipulate their info to make them look better".

No--they are LIARS, pure and simple.

One CA was actually able to lie their way out of being prosecuted by our State's Consumer Protection Agency after we turned in call logs clearly documenting they had violated both the FDCPA and State Business laws by calling NINE times back-to-back-to back between 7AM-7:45AM. The State responded to our complaint by refusing to prosecute them, claiming our case was a "dispute of the facts" and basically told us if we wanted anything done, to take them to court. Case closed.

All we wanted the State to do was enforce the damn consumer protection laws that are already on the books. The FTC never responded to our complaint.

"We would not have this many complaints if agencies and attorneys jsut follow the rules."

*Cue the violins*

Such simple, reductive logic.  No wonder it's wrong.  Excuse me while I sigh, wave the back of my right hand across my troubled brow, and swoon into a day lounge...

The problem is that there are 3rd party collections in the first place.  As long as there's a dollar to be chased, this will continue.  The only solution is to put you and your type out of business in order to force the original creditor to tidy up their own books.  You don't *protect* the economy and you are not necessary.

As I stated I worked in the field 10+ years AGO...collection agency will always be there.. do I like it what I have seen since I left - NO. There were agencies getting in trouble then but it seems to be worse as the economy gets worse. I have since fealt the wrath of the 3rd party agencies. I do not deal with them. I will be the 1st to complain. They have a script to follow and stay with it.

The agency I worked for I had to go thru the basic script but after that my goal was to bring in as much money as possible. Be it $25 per month or a settlement. I decided based on what the debtor told me they could do. I treated it like a SALES job. Most collectors now are robots.

Remmber we have witness rogue "scamming" collectors who give all agencies a bad name period!!!

Greetings from a MULT:
I cannot tell you how many collection calls I have received over the past two years.  I have a very common last name, and the calls have all been for individuals with my last name and first initial.  I was listed in the phone book by my initials, but when I changed the listing to my nickname and mother's middle initial a few months ago, the calls stopped, at least temporarily.  I have been lied to and accused of being a liar.  This whole business has been incredibly annoying and frightening.  To make matters worse, I seriously doubt that it's over.  And I don't have any debts.

"As I stated I worked in the field 10+ years AGO..."

Yes, I understand.  My point is that 3rd party collections, at any point in history, was and is a criminal enterprise.  By definition, it is the buying of an instrument at a reduced price and then selling that instrument at a higher price TO MAKE MONEY.  The motive for engaging in 3rd party collections has been the same since its inception - TO MAKE MONEY.  

The idea that money is made off of 'other money' (demanding payment that goes beyond what the 3rd party collector initially paid for the instrument) has a term, usuary.  Usury is against the law now and was back in 1980.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the reason why it seems so much worse now is because of the internet and public internet forums such as 800notes.  People have an avenue now to complain, anonymously to avoid backlash.  It 'seems' worse because more people are airing their grievances in public now.  

Third party debt collection has always - 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010 - been a 'shady,' 'secretive' business - the less oversight the better - where this wild west attitude has proliferated.  "It's legal if you don't get caught."  What I want to wind up with in this post is that no matter how much better 'the good old days' were, they were still breaking the law and that the only way to ensure that this aspect of the financial industry cleans up its act is to toss it out completely.