Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to become a debt buyer

coda.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 83 posts

Re: How to become a debt buyer

#41

Post by BobJS »

philipkglass wrote: post #33
BobJS wrote: post #29

I wrote this article years ago. I can't believe it's on HN today. As someone who spent almost a decade trying to run as ethical an agency as possible, I realized that there's no room for people who want to operate the right way. I could go on for days about all of the crazy stuff I saw while I was involved but leaving the debt industry was the best decision I ever made. Terrible industry, terrible people.

I'm upvoting this short comment in hopes that you'll share a somewhat longer story about what you tried to do and why it didn't work. Thanks!

I can answer any specific questions anybody has but basically, I landed in the industry by chance and got good at automating the collection process. I never had the backbone to strong arm people so I played the numbers game. Technology was my advantage.

Meanwhile, all of my peers were getting rich running unlicensed agencies and lying to debtors. I was getting sued constantly for following the rules. I'd win the lawsuits but it would cost me as much as $30k to fight them.

I employed over 500 people over about 8 years, many of them stole from me, overdosed, or ended up in jail because debt collectors tend to be troubled people. I shifted my focus to building software for the debt industry and went through a startup accelerator. That's when I fell in love with software and sold my agency.

Other than that, I'll answer any specific questions.

Re: How to become a debt buyer

#42

Post by BobJS »

bombcar wrote: post #38
BobJS wrote: post #29

I wrote this article years ago. I can't believe it's on HN today. As someone who spent almost a decade trying to run as ethical an agency as possible, I realized that there's no room for people who want to operate the right way. I could go on for days about all of the crazy stuff I saw while I was involved but leaving the debt industry was the best decision I ever made. Terrible industry, terrible people.

I would highly recommend writing some articles, and going on for days. Light is a good disinfectant.

This article leads a lot of people who want to break into the industry to reach out to me and I turn everyone away. Once I tell them what they can expect they're rarely still interested.

Re: How to become a debt buyer

#43

Post by preston4tw »

BobJS wrote: post #29

I wrote this article years ago. I can't believe it's on HN today. As someone who spent almost a decade trying to run as ethical an agency as possible, I realized that there's no room for people who want to operate the right way. I could go on for days about all of the crazy stuff I saw while I was involved but leaving the debt industry was the best decision I ever made. Terrible industry, terrible people.

I thought it was an interesting read and it would be interesting to hear a summation of why you left the industry.

It also made me consider the possibilities for a sort of vertically integrated debt collection company. Someone that's had a debt sent to collection is possibly a good candidate for financial literacy education, credit rehabilitation, debt consolidation and refinancing etc. Can debt collection serve as a sort of loss-leading subsidiary for a bigger business that provides financial literacy and services to people that need it?

Re: How to become a debt buyer

#44

Post by BobJS »

p0pcult wrote: post #19
tptacek wrote: post #12

This is currently, and for obvious reasons, trending towards a thread about how evil the debt collection industry is. That's a shame, because there's a lot of interesting stuff to learn from the mechanics of the debt collection business, and it's stuff you can put to use to protect yourself (and others) from its worst abuses. There are "is" arguments and there are "oughts". We probably all agree on the "oughts", at l…

>That's a shame Is it a shame? Could the guy instead have written an article entitled, "How to Protect Yourself (and Others) From the Worst Abuses of Debt Collectors"?

I probably have. I've been out of the industry since 2019 and I tend to create a lot of content. Since that is currently how I align I'd be surprised if I haven't done that somewhere.

Re: How to become a debt buyer

#45

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

cameronh90 wrote: post #34
alexb_ wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be interested if they at least said "Yeah, we're shitbags, but that's just how it is, and someone's gotta collect delinquent debt". What I'm not okay with is putting in shit like this: > The Debt Buying and Debt Collection industries can be a very rewarding career if it's right for you. It is also a risky business to be in and has a somewhat negative connotation among some groups because of a few people/compa…

Is there anything inherently shitbag about collecting debts? As long as you’re professional, follow the regulations and treat the debtor fairly, I’m not sure what the problem is. The debtor presumably agreed to take on the debt and still owes the money until either it’s discharged or they’ve paid what they owe. There are obviously a load of shitbags in the debt collection industry, but the only way to change that is…

> non-shitbags to get into the industry and replace them

I don't think this really works in this case. Much of the debt being purchased by the shitbags is unlikely to be affordable by the debtor and the collector usually ends up unsympathetically ignoring the financial situation of the debtor to shotgun-harass (contact 20 people and hope 2 answer) them in an effort to make a profit. The non-shitbags realize that this is the only winning strategy and choose to do something else.

Re: How to become a debt buyer

#46

Post by MichaelZuo »

BobJS wrote: post #41
philipkglass wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm upvoting this short comment in hopes that you'll share a somewhat longer story about what you tried to do and why it didn't work. Thanks!

I can answer any specific questions anybody has but basically, I landed in the industry by chance and got good at automating the collection process. I never had the backbone to strong arm people so I played the numbers game. Technology was my advantage. Meanwhile, all of my peers were getting rich running unlicensed agencies and lying to debtors. I was getting sued constantly for following the rules. I'd win the laws…

Thanks for sharing. How big of an advantage did the technology end up being in percentage terms?

Re: How to become a debt buyer

#47

Post by altacc »

agentdrtran wrote: post #35

Do parts of this sound ai-written to anyone else?

Whilst this article isn't (it's at least 2 years old based on wayback machine or 3 years old based on copyright notice), it's interesting to see that people are increasingly questioning the source of content.

Re: How to become a debt buyer

#49

Post by BobJS »

omginternets wrote: post #14
tptacek wrote: post #12

This is currently, and for obvious reasons, trending towards a thread about how evil the debt collection industry is. That's a shame, because there's a lot of interesting stuff to learn from the mechanics of the debt collection business, and it's stuff you can put to use to protect yourself (and others) from its worst abuses. There are "is" arguments and there are "oughts". We probably all agree on the "oughts", at l…

>there's a lot of interesting stuff to learn from the mechanics of the debt collection business I'm intrigued. Can you elaborate?

It's a legitimate need, it's just a corrupted industry because of misaligned incentives. We need some form of debt collections otherwise credit couldn't exist. The problem is that regulations are absolutely inconsistent and don't incentivize people to operate ethically. It's a regulatory problem.

An interesting fact is that a lot of agencies buy debt for about 1 cent on the dollar and liquidate around 2%. Collecting debt is actually very hard and the success rates are super low.

Re: How to become a debt buyer

#50

Post by latchkey »

BobJS wrote: post #41
philipkglass wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm upvoting this short comment in hopes that you'll share a somewhat longer story about what you tried to do and why it didn't work. Thanks!

I can answer any specific questions anybody has but basically, I landed in the industry by chance and got good at automating the collection process. I never had the backbone to strong arm people so I played the numbers game. Technology was my advantage. Meanwhile, all of my peers were getting rich running unlicensed agencies and lying to debtors. I was getting sued constantly for following the rules. I'd win the laws…

> I employed over 500 people over about 8 years, many of them stole from me, overdosed, or ended up in jail because debt collectors tend to be troubled people.

I owned a bar/night club for about 5 years. Most of the staff had (or gave me) the same problems.

Post reply on HN