Starting Collections Agency

hey man, finished going through the thread

doubt you're still checking up on this but worth firing some questions anyway

1 i was really surprised by how little capital you had to start things, do you think that is typical or that you took a lot of risk of ruin that people normally wouldn't engage in with such little starting capital

2 what is the day to day of working at your shop - they just call in and say "hey we purchased your debt and you better pay us?" like how does the script go?

3. a few years back my student loan organization sent me an email congratulating me for having paid off my loans - this was news to me since i'd been making min payments and was pretty sure it would take a few more years

even called my dad to double check that i didn't have some aunt die or something and he used that money to pay off my balance and he confirmed he had nnot

call up the student loan service to verify, the person on the phone said "yup we have your balance as paid off"

so i'm traveling abroad, don't really have any paperwork available but just assume that either i grossly overestimated the amount of debt i had left, or they made a mistake and i luckboxed my way out of it - felt about 50/50

years later nothing happens, then towards the end of covid another student loan company is calling my parents, saying that I'm a delinquent payer and that they could take their assets in order to collect on my student loan debt if i didn't resume payments

so they alert me, i give them a call, tell them this is the first i ever heard from them, tell them i was told by my old provider that it was paid off, none of my contact info had changed and thus i can't understand why it took them about 5 years before contacting me

they remained firm that all this was my fault, and luckily since it was covid, there were all these forgiveness things going on - so my credit isn't destroyed (was bad at the time due to the late payment hits (which btw didn't pop up until this time - so i think my account just got lost for a while or something because they weren't even reporting my non payment until rona) but in the last 2 years got it back up to what is now a good score

am wondering if you can shine any light on that and help me understand what exactly happened, why my old loan provider would sell my debt and then not tell me it was sold but instead congratulate me for paying it off and then and then why would it take the new company about 5 years before contacting me

overall i would say that "i won" out in the exchange because all in all only about 2k of interest and fees were tacked on during that entire period, but it still feels really messed up

which leads me to the final question

5 how do people sue you? how can they afford to sue you? under what grounds do they sue you? are they being irrational or does it make sense to sue a collections agency?

thanks in advance, doubt you'll see this, but worth a shot 😀

This thread- and its timeline, with the updates, and an ending- is a pretty amazing snapshot.
BFI has always punched 200 pounds above its weight on **** like this, even now that 2+2 is dead.

If the OP still checks in, what are your TOTAL TAKEAWAYS from getting into this?
If you had to do it over again, would you have chosen this path given the stresses associated but knowing it turned out well, or something else?

It's pretty standard to ask for a document that states that you are free of debt after you paid your debt.

Just read the entire thread, it reminded me of this article I saw last year written by a debtor advocate: https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/t...

For those who are knowledgeable about the industry, how accurate do you feel this article is? I'm particularly interested in comments on this snippet:

The former advocate in me will observe that the single most effective method for resolving debts is carefully sending a series of letters invoking one’s rights under the FDCPA (and other legislation) to a debt collector who is operationally incapable of respecting those rights, then threatening them with legal or regulatory action when they inevitably infringe upon them in writing, leading to them abandoning further attempts at collection.

This effectively makes paying consumer debts basically optional in the United States, contingent on one being sufficiently organized and informed.

The article suggests that breaking the law is standard procedure for debt collection agencies, who are able to do so because so few debtors understand how to work the system to their advantage.