Actually, it is illegal for them to call you at your place of employment for the very reason it could get you fired. You can even get them to stop calling you totally if you write them a letter. They are not obliged to do it if you only tell them over the phone. But write to them and tell them to STFU and they have to. Make sure you send it certified. My brother used to work for these agencies. What they do is sign a contract with some company that will allow them to try to collect on the debt for a period of say 3 months. Whatever they can collect they get X percentage of. So the more they can scam out of you the more money they make. Towards the end though they will usually take whatever they can get, if it's above the minimum set by the original debtor. If after 3 months they can't do it then the debtor can sell the option to another agency. These guys make a lot of money doing this stuff. But they're all scum of the earth.
the law varies for different states but they can call you at your job. i work for an agency (but i have nothing to do with the collection process, thank god for IT) and i have heard collectors call debtors at work. they cannot say to anyone except the debtor what the call is about and will only tell someone after they have asked if the person speaking is the debtor in question. when leaving messages they cannot say anything except my name is xxxx from xxxx company please call me back xxxxxx for the reason of coworkers/friends/family overhearing that they are in collections. sucks about the amex stuff CC companies do that alot
I wondered this same thing also. I have two open cards on my credit report that I could have sworn I had closed, both with zero balances. Will calling them to cancel the account help my credit score? I have excellent credit, but everything helps.
Yes. It would help. You don't want to have too little open credit but you don't want too much either. And the credit you do have open, it would help if you had a high credit limit with little balance. Basically, if alot of people trust you (high credit limit) but you don't use that credit, then you're rewarded with a high FICO score.
At the same time, we have the original thread starter stating that he hasn't made a payment on a debt for several years. Now he's someone who intends to pay it back, but there are many others that don't and I can understand why collection agencies operates the way they do. I don't neccessarily agree with it but just saying they probably see their share of dead beats as well. Also back to the question of why it became $6K, would it be too personal to ask what the original APR was? Because I did some quick math and 2^(1/5) ~ 1.15. So if you had a balance of $3000 at 15% APR on the debt, if you don't make a payment in five years, the balance with the accuring interest would probably double the loan at that point. The APR is probably a little lower since most loans are compounded monthly. Once again, just some quick math so I could be totally wrong here.
My family was hounded by creditors once, and luckily I found this website... http://www.creditinfocenter.com/rebuild/debt_validation.shtml Always ask for the invoice or statement. Always record your conversations, or certify your mail correspondence for simple proof of contact. There's a lot of info as to what tactics are legal and what isn't. No one wants to be a deadbeat loser...unless you get paid for it. It depends on how long you've had them. IIRC, canceling a card in less than a year will have a negative impact, but it's likely temporary if you don't do it that often.
