I've got an ultra rare limited edition holofoil credit card debt. Anyone want to make a trade offer?
Credit card debt collection
81–90 of 568 posts
Re: Credit card debt collection
#82Off topic: I've ignored any medical bills I thought were unfair for 12+ years. It's probably over $10k in bills altogether. It's never shown up on my credit reports though (I check often and bought a house last year). So your results may vary. In the mean time I just throw out the debt collector bills as I get them.
I've done the same, with the same results, because I've rarely come across a medical bill that is actually correct. I'll call the provider once and explain what's wrong with the bill. Either they fix it, or I ignore them completely after that. Their bills go straight to the trash unopened. Frequently as soon as you explain they need to fix something they just completely drop the bill for the same reasons as in this a…
You can also get pretty good results by asking them to itemize their bill, if it's not already (which it won't be).
Re: Credit card debt collection
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the same with tax collection in the US (seen different versions of this done by IRS, California’s BOE and SF treasury) It goes something like this: they send you a scary looking letter telling you there’s something off about your taxes, you then need to call them (because they don’t do email and mailing anything will go over the time limit to comply), then they tell you more in detail what the problem is and…
This happened to me. I sent the letter to my CPA, he realized he made an error and in fact the IRS owed me a bunch of money, which they returned.
To the IRSs credit, I once got a letter saying there was a mistake in my tax form and I overpaid. They sent me a check.
Re: Credit card debt collection
#84Can I max out all my credit cards and then never pay?
That's called bust-out fraud and your bank might suspect it and start declining large purchases if it's way out of character for you.
Re: Credit card debt collection
#85patio11’s prior writing on this topic helped give me the knowledge and fortitude to successfully dispute several thousand dollars of fraudulent claims that Enterprise rental cars tried to collect from me. As he alluded to, my high-FICO self felt morally bound to settle and pay for the dented bumper, but they definitely violated the FDCPA and some CFPB rules (in writing!), which I enumerated for them. Maybe if I went…
Yeah, that line stood out to me... I don't know how many of those high FICO score people pay because of morality verse how many pay because they want to continue to have access to lower cost debt that having a high FICO score gets you.
Re: Credit card debt collection
#86Can I max out all my credit cards and then never pay?
They will likely appear on your credit report and will stay in there for 7 years. So yeah, prolly, if you're not planning on using your credit for 7 years.
Re: Credit card debt collection
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that works only the first time.
Why? The debt issuer has already written the debt off, why do they care whether it's bought by someone intent on forgiving it?
People are less likely to pay their debts if they think their debts will be sold to someone who will forgive it, so the debt issuer's other non-written-off debts will be harder to collect (since now those people know that they might be able to get out of their debts by waiting and hoping they get sold to a debt-forgiver).
Re: Credit card debt collection
#88> I will bet you that, in practice, they simply avoid collecting against anyone who demonstrates ability and financial resources to enforce their rights. This is one for the history books of borked equilibriums. We devoted substantial efforts to pro-consumer legislation to address abuse of (mostly) poor people. We gated redress behind labor that is abundantly available in the professional managerial class and scarce…
The welfare system requires more than a minimal amount of paperwork, and a lot of people are surprisingly bad with paperwork. Then you have immigrants who don't have access to this system, or are afraid to use it.
Re: Credit card debt collection
#89Can I max out all my credit cards and then never pay?
He states that they typically won't sue you for debts of just a few hundred dollars, but if it's over $1000, then they're more likely to sue you in order to be able to garnish your wages and bank accounts, and/or file liens against your property.
So, "maxing out all your credit cards" it depends on just how much that maxxing would be.
Re: Credit card debt collection
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
I never heard of buying credit debt, but I had heard of people buying medical debt in this manner. I get and respect the medical debt concept. Credit debt though is a tough one. How can you tell that someone ran up credit debt because they were paying for medical bills or something vs debt financing shopping sprees or vacations? Giving those who fall on hard times help is admirable. Giving people bad at personal fina…
Medical debt shouldn't be a thing in a civilized society. Credit card debt is a failure of the financial system to properly assess risk, credit cards shouldn't be that easy to get, and predatory credit card offers should be outlawed. Similar to how identity theft is somehow your problem when it's actually the banks and other systems that enable it.
I’m not sure saying credit cards should be harder to get is the correct stance. I saw a paper talking about the rise of payday loans came at the cost of pawn shops. Basically there is a lot of demand for short term loans, I would argue that better access to credit would help many people greatly.
The only thing I’m unclear on is how to avoid the predatory aspect. I’d assume that part of the usury terms of these kinds of loans is a response to such small amounts. Just paying the hourly cost of dealing with the transaction could put a $200 dollar loan into 5% territory without taking into account any risk profile.
I’d be intereted in running experiments similar to cash giving charities. Measure how much a $2000 line of credit does to improve lives (hopefully without making them worse).