When the collectors call the debtors, can the debtor demand a paper trail to prove that the collector is the actual owner of the debt? Why should a debtor pay any amount of money to a random person who calls them and says they bought an old debt?
I got a $1200 medical bill, about half of which was BS. I sent a certified letter disputing the invalid charges. I never got a reply, so I never paid. I started getting calls from a collector. I blocked the numbers, end of story. I similarly never paid some bullshit charge from a landlord. These unpaid "debts" have never impacted me in the slightest.
If someone is trying to screw you, just don't pay. I don't understand why people are such cowards about it.
"If you have a lot of cash" speaks volumes about where you're coming from, though. Congratulations on being one of the very privileged few in this country who can afford to do what you suggest. The vast majority of the rest simply cannot.
If you have the discipline to say, "no new debt," which isn't that hard to do after you've already fucked up your score, then you can hit thirty with a clean slate.
Can't you just offer the landlord occasional use of your boat and promise to pull family connections (everyone has them, no?) to get White House internships for his kids?
Going with the implicit assumption that we're talking about someone who's making a pretty good bit of money, but who has a bad credit rating, I'm only arguing that it's not impossible to rent an apartment.
I love your blog by the way.
Some dings from the racketeers might be a problem if you want to rent a $4K apartment on a $90K income, but even then I doubt it.
I almost get the sense that upper middle class nerds have no idea how most of society actually operates and how strong a position solid income puts you in.
Oh, the irony. Unless, of course, you meant to lump yourself in with the "clueless" upper middle class. $150k/yr is actually beyond middle class. That's affluent, at minimum. It's not "rich" in the sense that the average person earning that income could just stop working whenever he wanted, but for a single person that's top 5% territory, and for a family it's top 10%.
For what it's worth, my household income, including passive income from rental property, is north of $200k. I know very well what having a high income affords. I've also been on the other end of the spectrum, near homeless when my impoverished single mother was raising me and my brother. I'll be blunt: you're the clueless one here. You have no idea what you're talking about, and your comments make you seem out of touch and, frankly, a bit gormless.
Much truth to this. Also much truth that pointing out to HN that most of them have no idea how the world really works is rarely useful.
[citation needed]
Sure, a single unpaid bill won't hurt you, but that's because it won't hurt your credit score much. If your credit score is low enough, your bank may still give you a loan to buy a house, but will demand a lot more money up front and charge you a much higher interest rate.
If you can buy a house for cash, it might not matter, but there are plenty of non-"poor people" who can't just drop a quarter million dollars off in a suitcase.
I know people who have had problems with all of the above because of poor credit.
I agree that the credit industry relies on extortion. I also know for a fact that some debt collectors act as front men for 'legit' banks and credit card companies who use them to extort extra interest from written-off debt. So they get a double profit - a tax write-off, and some or all of the principal back, with interest.
The lenders should - and I guess do - run actuarial models which give them a good idea what current and future default rates are.
I know there's at least one credit card company in the UK that deliberately lends to people with poor credit - not because it's run by nice people, but because it knows it can maximise profit by taking defaulters to court and foreclosing on their houses.
It's a vile, despicable business run by failed human beings.
When I bought a car from the dealer I told the loan guy that I had a 0.9% rate at my Credit Union so I didn't need financing. He was able to match the rate based on my credit score and take 300.00 off the car. I doubt he would have believed that I qualified for %0.9 if I had bad credit. So for me we are talking about a difference of at least $300 a year for having a good Rating.
Information does eventually age out of your credit report.
In many jurisdictions, they have to disclose that they're doing so. Fake a competing "exploding" offer to put time pressure on them. They'll write you an offer (if they're interested) quickly. Then, if they rescind the offer later because they don't like what they see on a credit check, threaten to sue for promissory estoppel. Whether or not you're likely to win, they'll settle in order not to be known as a company that rescinds offers. Walk away with a severance, without even having set foot on the job site.
I'm not saying that people should let their credit scores go to shit just to avoid paying small debts. It's rarely worth it to welch on a debt. However, in the case of employment, there is a strategy if you think you're at risk of losing job opportunities based on a credit report. (That said, I've never heard of anyone in tech getting dicked on bad credit. But in our scummy/chummy industry, rescinded offers over reputation issues are not uncommon and those can usually be turned into 3-5 months' pay.)
At which point they'll promptly hire you, and let you go in the first week, as you're "just not working out", and you're most likely in an "at will" state.
First, "at will" employment is pretty complicated. It's not as cut-and-dry as it's made out to be. Besides, this is a detrimental reliance case: you're arguing that you relied on an offer that was fraudulent, and if they fired you in the first week and couldn't show that it was part of a business layoff or due to criminal behavior on your part, you'd still have that argument.
Second, once you rescind an offer, that person's pissed. Letting that person into the building, even for a week, is not something a risk-averse company is going to do lightly. Third, companies would have all sorts of internal-publicity/morale issues in doing this: hiring someone for a week just to can him on an obviously phony performance case. Fourth, companies care as much about disparagement as about lawsuits, which is why you can often get a settlement even if you don't have grounds to sue (or, more commonly, the suit wouldn't be worth the time put into it). Of course, you shouldn't threaten to disparage in a severance negotiation, because if you don't know what you're doing you can end up unknowingly committing extortion, but it is a concern on their side.
Companies are risk-averse and want to protect their reputations and avoid headaches. Once they've rescinded the offer, a 3-5 month severance is easier than taking the risk of letting you into the building. What if your boss and team like you (and, in the first week, why wouldn't they)? Do they really want to deal with the morale mess of firing you in the first month?
Of course, this doesn't apply when offers are rescinded for legitimate reasons (whole-office shutdowns, massive layoffs) but that's not what we're talking about here.
You got it backwards anyways. It isn't run background check -> Offer job it is Offer job -> Run background check. Offer job is always first.
http://www.consumerfinance.gov/askcfpb/1699/how-can-i-verify...
When enough seemingly-personal details match, gullible people get tricked into sending money. The only thing that solves this problem is for people to stop entertaining unsolicited calls of any form. How much are VOIP rates these days? Last time I looked, it took something like $50 to leave a short message for everyone in a phone prefix (10 kilopeople).
In the case that one possibly does have an unpaid debt and wants to resolve it, then call up the original creditor and follow the debt's legitimate path from the source. And when you finally have someone to pay, insist on written documentation from every party in the chain, absolving you of the debt.
No. Debt is not a crime in the USA. And it is generally more profitable for collectors to sell your debt on to the next collector than to take any sort of civil legal action against you. Some exceptions include IRS and Student Loans.
As the article indicated, the best reaction (assuming you don't intend to pay) is to hang up.
So really, your question "why should a debtor pay...?" is always answered by "the collector convinces them to." Giving the consumer rights and protections is, at this point, insufficient. Their current rights and protections are not being exercised, due to ignorance. That's something that needs to be fixed.