How To Deal With Debt Collectors

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Wednesday, December 17th, 2008 Subscribe To Our Feed

Debt collectors ringing your phone off the hook and sending intimidating letters can frazzle anyone’s nerves. But you have various forms of protection and many techniques available to deal with them.

Regulations have been established by the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act that stipulate how far debt collectors are permitted to go in their efforts to collect on debts. For example, there are only permitted to call between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m., and they are not allowed to make idle threats of action that cannot legally be taken. If you instruct them not to call you they cannot continue calling.

This presents you with choices. You can choose to screen your calls, allowing the answering machine to pick up, or use caller id to preview your callers and decide if you’d rather not accept the call.

If you decide to talk you can request that they not continue calling you. If you enforce this request by sending a “cease and desist” letter it is illegal for the collectors to continue to contact you. This can be a costly legal act, so it may be better to explore other options before resorting to this.

First, you should consider actually paying the debt, if you can and if you actually owe it. You took on the load, and the creditor is entitled to be paid. But, if you’re seriously short of funds, you can couple this with negotiating for a reduced rate.

If you follow up on the commitment, the phone calls will stop. Bill collectors, despite their sometimes unpleasant attitude, are just performing a service for which they get paid. They will move on to others, once an agreement is in place.

It is important to keep good record of all calls received and agreements made. If you have instructed a debt collector to stop calling you, make note of that, especially if they are calling your place of employment. If it is legal where you live you could record calls. However research this because you may be required to inform the caller that the conversation is being recorded.

If you inform the debt collector that you are recording the conversation, most will be very careful not to overstep their bounds. If you are trying to negotiate a debt reduction these recordings can be very helpful.

Remember that debt collectors receive their payment based on a percentage of whatever they are able to collect. Therefore, though they may be authorized to accept less than they are demanding, they want you to pay as close to the full amount as possible. If you are persistent they will reduce the amount. They realize that a part of the whole is better than nothing at all.

Debt consolidation is an effective way to pay off debt faster but it’s not right for everyone. Find out more about when you should and shouldn’t consider consolidating your debt on the Inside Debt Consolidation website.

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