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Credit card debt collection

bitsaboutmoney.com

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Re: Credit card debt collection

#291

Post by vuln »

Reason077 wrote: post #177

One thing that's not mentioned in this article is that credit card companies will sometimes make last-ditch "clear your debt at a discount" offers before passing your debt on to a collection agency. This happened to me many years ago. In the wake of the '08 financial crisis, I'd lost my job abruptly and decided to go travelling. I'd accumulated a balance that was fairly substantial for me at the time (on the order of…

In this case the difference between what you owe and what you settled at will have to be claimed as income on your taxes.

Re: Credit card debt collection

#292

Post by AlgorithmicTime »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #206
eru wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Singapore has only recently become affluent, mostly thanks to hard work by the locals, but also partially thanks to policies that did not discourage people from putting in that hard work. I'm not sure what you mean by monocultural? Singapore is famously multicultural. Singapore is very open to foreigners. Almost no one's family has been here for longer than three or four generations. I'm not sure where you get xenoph…

> To call them 'borderline fascist' you'd need a rather torturous definition of fascism (or a generous definition of borderline). Does hanging people arrested with small enough amounts of drugs that you'd get a relatively minor punishment in the U.S. not at least toe the borderline of fascism?

Fascism is very specifically about about the subordination of all competing spheres to the State. "All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state."

Re: Credit card debt collection

#293

Post by Reason077 »

didntcheck wrote: post #244
Aardwolf wrote: post #218

> you, reader, use credit cards in preference to debit cards as a payment instrument Reader from Europe here. I use debit cards for daily payments, that's just the most standard expected payment method in Europe (with mobile payments now replacing it. Is a mobile payment app more like a debit or like a credit card? I have no idea actually!). But credit cards for online payments on the internet because (despite some d…

[In the UK] despite the verbiage on most sites still saying "credit card", I've been using ordinary debit cards (from both Visa and MC) online for as long as I've shopped online, and never had a single issue related to them being debit. For many years I didn't even have a credit card Edit: it's possible that this is an issue of semantics. My cards have been debit cards in every sense of the term - they are labelled a…

Back in the day, UK debit cards were issued on distinct networks from credit cards - eg: Switch, Solo, and Maestro. Those cards weren't necessarily accepted in all the same places as credit cards, particularly internationally.

But over the past 10 years or so, those debit card networks have been phased out in the UK and almost universally replaced with Visa and Mastercard debit cards. As far as acceptance goes, these are pretty much 100% identical to using credit cards on those same networks.

Re: Credit card debt collection

#294

Post by avar »

worklaptopacct wrote: post #274
Aardwolf wrote: post #218

> you, reader, use credit cards in preference to debit cards as a payment instrument Reader from Europe here. I use debit cards for daily payments, that's just the most standard expected payment method in Europe (with mobile payments now replacing it. Is a mobile payment app more like a debit or like a credit card? I have no idea actually!). But credit cards for online payments on the internet because (despite some d…

Are debit cards really not accepted online? I thought that save for some very specific applications, all Visa or MasterCard branded cards should work online. Never got a Visa refused, and it's a Visa Debit. I know that some places like Germany informally refer to any Visa or Mastercard as a "credit card", in contrast to true(?) debit systems such as Maestro or V-Pay. So if a place says "No credit cards", it means tha…

It differs by banks and countries, but e.g. my Dutch debit card only has an IBAN number on it, so anything set up to accept credit card numbers won't accept it.

Almost every online web shop here will accept debit cards, but it's through a Dutch specific payment mechanism (iDEAL).

Re: Credit card debt collection

#295

Post by [deleted] »

Uehreka wrote: post #271
Aardwolf wrote: post #218

> you, reader, use credit cards in preference to debit cards as a payment instrument Reader from Europe here. I use debit cards for daily payments, that's just the most standard expected payment method in Europe (with mobile payments now replacing it. Is a mobile payment app more like a debit or like a credit card? I have no idea actually!). But credit cards for online payments on the internet because (despite some d…

Not sure if this is different in Europe (check before saying it’s different, many people in the US aren’t aware of this either) but in the US at least all credit card transactions (and possibly debit too?) incur like a 3% fee. You’re paying that fee (either directly or through it being built into the price of goods) no matter what. The reason to use a card with a good rewards program is so that you actually get somet…

[deleted]

Re: Credit card debt collection

#296

Post by pjmlp »

nbadg wrote: post #268
Aardwolf wrote: post #218

> you, reader, use credit cards in preference to debit cards as a payment instrument Reader from Europe here. I use debit cards for daily payments, that's just the most standard expected payment method in Europe (with mobile payments now replacing it. Is a mobile payment app more like a debit or like a credit card? I have no idea actually!). But credit cards for online payments on the internet because (despite some d…

In my experience (~31yrs US, ~2yrs Germany): USA: debit cards and credit cards are both offered through banks. They operate on the same payment infrastructure (Visa, Mastercard, etc). They are all equally accepted. The only difference between them from a consumer standpoint is that a debit card immediately withdraws the money from your account and typically requires a PIN for purchases, whereas a credit card operates…

Living since 2004 in Germany, Kreditkarte is definitly a known term and people known the difference.

I guess the biggest difference from US is that you need to earn the Kreditkarte, not everyone gets to own one if the bank account isn't that inspiring, and even after getting one, the limits depend on how healthy the bank account tends to be on average.

Re: Credit card debt collection

#297

Post by refurb »

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #275
Uehreka wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if this is different in Europe (check before saying it’s different, many people in the US aren’t aware of this either) but in the US at least all credit card transactions (and possibly debit too?) incur like a 3% fee. You’re paying that fee (either directly or through it being built into the price of goods) no matter what. The reason to use a card with a good rewards program is so that you actually get somet…

It’s a bit more insidious than that in that in a lot of stores and restaurants in America owners just bake that fee into the price instead of explicitly passing it onto the consumer and giving them the choice on whether they want to pay it. So if you use a debit card in the states you are usually actually subsidizing everyone else’s 3% fees (there are in fact places that explicitly charge the 3% fee to credit card us…

a lot of stores and restaurants in America owners just bake that fee into the price instead of explicitly passing it onto the consumer

Not really. Most businesses don't set prices based on "cost plus" methodology. Maximizing profit based on price and volume is how most do it. Some merchants may choose to absorb the 3%, to compete on price and maximize profit through higher volume than a competitor who charges the same price but doesn't accept credit cards.

You "always pay the 3% fee" the same way you "always pay" for anything else the merchant may offer but you don't use: curbside pick-up, free delivery, the "free gift with purchase" you don't accept because you don't need it, generous returns policy, etc, etc.

Re: Credit card debt collection

#298

Post by pjmlp »

eru wrote: post #36

> 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…

> So all in all, Germany still has homeless people, despite welfare programs generous enough in principle that no one needs to be homeless.

One of the reasons is that for being part of those programs, the people have to want to be re-integrated, leave out any kind of drugs that there were using, take part in employment trainings,... and not everyone is keen in going through that and rather stay on the streets.

Re: Credit card debt collection

#299

Post by joezydeco »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #234
b112 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poor credit can cost you dearly. Higher rates on everything, and a .5% difference in a mortgate rate is massive. It's a way to burn your credit for years, at great personal cost, so not likely that people will take the out without desperation.

Back in the early '10s I was reading a report from a guy who had stellar credit and the card limits to go with them. He ran up about $100,000 of debt on his cards on purpose and stopped making payments. He then approached his bank to settle the debt and negotiated a 60% discount. The account was marked "paid by customer" so it never appeared on his on his credit report as a default. He did get dinged for missing paym…

Doesn't the IRS consider settled debt as income? Did he have to report that?

Re: Credit card debt collection

#300

Post by refurb »

dpig_ wrote: post #171
dylan604 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a huuuuge difference from being poor serfs in the feudal lord's fiefdom than someone that can't say no to a sale but can't actually afford it and buys on credit.

Or you can just do charity without deciding you also must be a moral arbiter.

Or you can't do charity that just enables poor behavior and traps people in it.
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