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Credit card debt collection

bitsaboutmoney.com

511–520 of 568 posts

Re: Credit card debt collection

#511
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Credit card are by default Debit Card Credit cards are credit cards, even in Europe. It's just that banks issue debit cards, rather than credit cards and I think that the point. You're financial business in much of the EU is between you and your bank, not some third party credit card company. The debit cards rides on top of the networks built by VISA and MasterCard (and others) for the credit card industry, but the…

In Sweden you can apply for a credit card directly through the bank. And aren't credit card companies separated from the bank everywhere?

> And aren't credit card companies separated from the bank everywhere?

Do you mean in Europe? Because that is not the case in the US and India. While there are credit card companies, most banks issue credit cards themselves.

Re: Credit card debt collection

#512
post #509
post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are multiple problems with this. First, if you just hand money to individuals, it's very hard to remove that money from the economy later. If the central bank injects money by buying an asset, like a government bond, they can just sell it later to (approximately) remove the same amount of money as they previously injected. > If the central bank printed an equivalent amount per capita, more of it would be invest…

> First, if you just hand money to individuals, it's very hard to remove that money from the economy later I'm not really arguing that that would be a better option (outside of exceptional circumstances) though. > What makes you think so? Because lower income households generally have low saving rates. > Btw, 'money' doesn't really get invested, at least not on the level of the whole economy. If someone invests money…

Bubbles don't really exist as a meaningful empiric concept. Especially not when you have a robust short selling system so that speculators can pop 'bubbles'.

Re: Credit card debt collection

#513
post #484
post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Agreed. I would formulate it slightly more cynically: to be part of many programs you have to go through the right motions so that the civil servant in charge can tick the box that says 'wants to be re-integrated' etc. If you are literate enough with bureaucracy and paperwork, that's not too much of a hassle; and they can't really look into your heart and see that you'd really rather sit at home, collect welfare and…

[dead]

Re: Credit card debt collection

#514
post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But isn't that the point? You have to address the other hurdles too. For most benefits programs that is still going to be necessary even if you remove means testing, because some kind of identification would be necessary to keep someone from claiming the benefit an unlimited number of times. Which is the same as the problem with voting.

See what I wrote earlier: Singapore has an ingenious system to ration the amount of subsidies you get on hospital bills without any bureaucracy. The basic idea is that when you go for a hospital stay, you get to pick how much extra creature comforts you are getting, like your own private room vs an open word with many beds. The copay for the fancier options rises 'progressively' enough, that the absolute amount of go…

That works for medicine because nobody wants two appendectomies. But plenty of people would want a second apartment, an unlimited amount of subsidized food they could resell, another UBI or social security payment etc. Then everyone backs up their truck to fill it with a fungible commodity being offered below the market price.

The biggest problem with most of these things isn't that they require ID, it's that they require means testing. Showing your ID is, I mean, you take it out of your pocket. We could make one sufficiently easy to get and then it works for everything.

But if you also have to show that you're currently unemployed but previously made an amount of money within the eligibility threshold but haven't been unemployed for more than six months to collect unemployment and then show that you don't have investment income more than some other amount to get food assistance and then show that your household income is below some other threshold to get housing assistance etc. etc., that's a hot mess.

The sensible thing to do is replace all of said mess with a UBI, which doesn't require means testing and so doesn't require all of that paperwork. But it still requires something basic to keep you from getting more than one.

Re: Credit card debt collection

#515
post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My German driver's license doesn't have my address on it. So the problem doesn't come up.

Do German driver's licenses normally have addresses on them? If legal actions were to occur involving an average person, how does that person get notofied? How would you be notified?

German driver's licences don't normally have addresses on them. You can easily find example pictures of them with an image search on the web.

> If legal actions were to occur involving an average person, how does that person get notified?

The authorities send you a letter at the address that's registered with them (if you have one and they have one). That system is just completely independent of driver's licenses.

Your government ID card and passport do have your address on them (if you have one).

https://icwb.com/de/keine-meldeadresse and https://praxistipps.focus.de/meldeadresse-ohne-wohnung-das-s... are two random website about how to deal with the system, if you don't have a fixed address.

See also https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einwohnermeldeamt

> How would you be notified?

Interestingly, I also don't have a fixed address in Germany, because I haven't lived there in a while.

Officially, you need to tell them that you are leaving, but for the longest time I did not. (Mostly out of laziness.) They tracked me down once in Singapore to remind me to pay back my student loans, and I dutifully complied.

My passport shows my Australian address, because that's where I lived when I last had to renew that document. (And it also only shows that I lived in Sydney without any further details. German addresses would tell to the street and number etc.)

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Just to summarize: Germany does have many of the same issues in general (but the exact details vary). It just so happens that in Germany this system does not intersect (much) with driver's licenses.

Mostly because Driver's licenses are not used as general ID cards in Germany.

Re: Credit card debt collection

#516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

It's authoritarian for sure, but not Fascist. Fascist regimes have historically been quite OK with drug use so long as it serves their ends.

Compare https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Panzerschokolade

Re: Credit card debt collection

#517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google translation: “and that means that you can submit a GDPR request to have a BKR registration corrected” This suggests you can only get records removed if they’re incorrect — is that what you meant?

The record can technically be correct but not in "pursuit of a legitimate interest". In that case the negative record can be "corrected". So, in my case. When I was a teenager I opened a second bank account with credit card. In only used the card once for something small and forgot about it. Throughout the years the cost of this card started to built up, messages to pay back where not received because I already had a…

Very interesting, thank you

Re: Credit card debt collection

#518
post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See what I wrote earlier: Singapore has an ingenious system to ration the amount of subsidies you get on hospital bills without any bureaucracy. The basic idea is that when you go for a hospital stay, you get to pick how much extra creature comforts you are getting, like your own private room vs an open word with many beds. The copay for the fancier options rises 'progressively' enough, that the absolute amount of go…

That works for medicine because nobody wants two appendectomies. But plenty of people would want a second apartment, an unlimited amount of subsidized food they could resell, another UBI or social security payment etc. Then everyone backs up their truck to fill it with a fungible commodity being offered below the market price. The biggest problem with most of these things isn't that they require ID, it's that they re…

You can give out welfare without id or means testing: just require people to hang out in a specific place, and give them eg five dollars each hour.

It's a terrible wast of people's time, but it solves the specific problem.

> The sensible thing to do is replace all of said mess with a UBI, which doesn't require means testing and so doesn't require all of that paperwork.

Yes, though instead of saying that UBI doesn't require means testing, I would say that a UBI folds the means testing of the tax system and the welfare system into one, and then decides on the net payment (constant UBI - taxes) that you get.

At least that point of view makes sense for something like personal income taxes. If most of your tax take comes from VAT or land value taxes, this framing is less useful.

Re: Credit card debt collection

#519

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…

It seems like this is the solution: Anytime your debt is sold on, the debtor has the right of first refusal on the price it is being sold for.

If the bank is willing to ding your credit sore and move on through parting with your $1000 of debt for $100, then you should have the opportunity to buy it at that price and be done as well.

Re: Credit card debt collection

#520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Isn't this just the "social credit" system that people worry about in China, except privatised Indeed it is, but Americans have a weird tendency to love horrible things done to them by private companies.

Because for the most part, private companies who you have alienated yourself from have competitors, and don't enforce their displeasure with you at the end of a bayonet while holding shackles. State Level credit system is an actual dystopia.

> private companies who you have alienated yourself from have competitors

Can't alienate yourself from Experian.

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