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Inside the Dark, Lucrative World of Consumer Debt Collection

nytimes.com

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Re: Inside the Dark, Lucrative World of Consumer Debt Collection

#131

Post by coldtea »

eli wrote: post #51
blhack wrote: post #34

This is one of the most unbelievable articles I've ever read. If you didn't read it all the way through, do so over lunch or something; it's amazing. The idea of "millions of dollars" worth of debt being traded for around on thumb drives, and that all those thumb drives really contain are excel spreadsheets is mind boggling . Those people in those spreadsheets are real people , and they're being completely duhumanize…

Sure, but on the other hand, let's say you run a small business. At some point you have customers who don't pay. What do you do? Write it off as a total loss? 1/12 is better than nothing.

This is not about small businesses. It's about suit and tied scum, like the banking and insurance business. They buy and lobby politicians to deregulate their sectors like crazy, they give away credit cards and loans like candy, they use all the "black" tricks to inflate debt and tie people to their monthly installments forever. And when those fail, here come the collection agencies, including paid scum using borderline illegal methods. Of course if those companies fail themselves, they have some trillion dollar public money bailouts to expect.

About people that should "know better". Sure. Doesn't always happen, and people are not all perfectly rational, highly disclipined game-theoritic individuals. It's easy to preach "personal responsibility" from an ivory tower (and who knows what kind of privileged upbringing or lucky break), but it doesn't make those people less victims. It's like a woman victim of domestic abuse ― she should know better and leave the guy, but that doesn't make him any less of a prick.

Re: Inside the Dark, Lucrative World of Consumer Debt Collection

#132

Post by BallinBige »

nodetrend wrote: post #128

"Most negative information disappears from credit reports after seven years and, depending on state law, debts may be unrecoverable through a lawsuit after as little as three years" So all I have to do to get out of my loans is live off the grid for 7 years? I wonder if this is the same for student loans.

in some cases, if you make a payment of any amount towards your debt, the statute of limitations resets... so keep that in mind!

Re: Inside the Dark, Lucrative World of Consumer Debt Collection

#133

Post by xyzzyz »

bequanna wrote: post #115
forca wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Medical debt rankles me like nothing else. The US, supposedly the most advanced nation on Earth has the worst notion of all: health care for profit. Simply evil. Health care is a basic human right. Full stop. Health care should never be based on one's ability to pay. Never. I pray I see socialised medicine in the US in my lifetime. If Hilary Clinton gets elected, the push for this will be stronger than the thin edge…

I agree, but I think there is too much at stake for too many high net-worth individuals and corporations for the US to make a change to the single-payer system. A 10% rise in taxes? That's a heck of a lot of money. The majority of the rich won't buy into it, they'll fight it tooth and nail. In my opinion, I think it depends on how well appeals for/against a single-payer system resonate with the middle class. Do they…

>A 10% rise in taxes? That's a heck of a lot of money. The majority of the rich won't buy into it, they'll fight it tooth and nail.

But now they pay insurance anyway, aren't they?. With a single-payer system, their contribution would actually probably fall.

Re: Inside the Dark, Lucrative World of Consumer Debt Collection

#134

Post by ebiggs »

Debtors need to take control. They need to collectively seize the paper at the giant discount and then dismiss the debt.

How to do such a thing? Seems impossible, but even a 4x or 5x overhead would be a giant bargain for the debtors next to the sharks, and the sharks wouldn't be able to compete on those margins.

Re: Inside the Dark, Lucrative World of Consumer Debt Collection

#135

Post by Mz »

This is sort of funny stuff to me:

Not long after getting out of prison, Wilson took a job as a debt collector. He proved quite good at it, and soon he bought some paper and opened his first agency. Later, he also became a debt broker or dealer, a type of role he knew quite well: “I used to buy pounds of weed, all right, and then break it down and sell ounces to the other guys, who were then breaking it down and selling dime bags on the corner, right? Well, that’s what [I’m] doing in debt.”

I mean a lot of it has comical tones -- granted, darkly comical. But, hey, I have probably had more real financial problems then most folks on HN and my dad once collected about 98% of the defaulted debts kept in (probably) a shoe box at a small business he worked for. So I have seen kind of both sides of this quite close to home.

Re: Inside the Dark, Lucrative World of Consumer Debt Collection

#137

Post by snuxoll »

prostoalex wrote: post #127
snuxoll wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hospitals aren't the problem, every hospital in the Boise, ID area is non-profit and frequently they work with those without coverage to significantly reduce or completely write off their medical expenses. It's the insurance system that is the problem, since I have insurance the hospitals won't give me a dime off my bill, and my costs are heavily inflated because those of us WITH insurance are subsidizing those w…

Just to clarify: a bunch of people pooling their resources together to negotiate a lower price are a problem, but provider charging high prices to those not able to negotiate a discount is not a problem?

Sorry, I may have mis-phrased this, I've edited my original comment. The problem is those pooling their resources into insurance companies are subsidizing those who are NOT. This is what the insurance mandate of the Affordable Care Act is trying to fix, we have yet to see if this will work or not.

Ultimately, the simplest solution to the resource pooling problem is to eliminate the insurance industry and go single-payer, then EVERYONE pays with their taxes. However, many insurance companies are for-profit and they'll keep fighting against single-payer until they go out of business.

Re: Inside the Dark, Lucrative World of Consumer Debt Collection

#138

Post by seanmcdirmid »

snuxoll wrote: post #114
prostoalex wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, there are more not-for-profit hospitals than there are for-profit hospitals, which doesn't dramatically change the pricing equation. http://www.aha.org/research/rc/stat-studies/fast-facts.shtml One man's profit is another man's stash for bonuses and building a new wing of the hospital.

The hospitals aren't the problem, every hospital in the Boise, ID area is non-profit and frequently they work with those without coverage to significantly reduce or completely write off their medical expenses. It's the insurance system that is the problem, since I have insurance the hospitals won't give me a dime off my bill, and my costs are heavily inflated because those of us WITH insurance are subsidizing those w…

Insurers almost always negotiate huge discounts with hospitals. So the bill you see is not the bill they pay, and what they pay is considered confidential.

Re: Inside the Dark, Lucrative World of Consumer Debt Collection

#139

Post by selectodude »

xyzzyz wrote: post #133
bequanna wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but I think there is too much at stake for too many high net-worth individuals and corporations for the US to make a change to the single-payer system. A 10% rise in taxes? That's a heck of a lot of money. The majority of the rich won't buy into it, they'll fight it tooth and nail. In my opinion, I think it depends on how well appeals for/against a single-payer system resonate with the middle class. Do they…

>A 10% rise in taxes? That's a heck of a lot of money. The majority of the rich won't buy into it, they'll fight it tooth and nail. But now they pay insurance anyway, aren't they?. With a single-payer system, their contribution would actually probably fall.

Right now, if high net worth individuals pay insurance at all (it's usually an employer provided benefit), it's pre-tax and even the best cadillac plans for the entire family are ~2k/mo. A 10 percent increase in income tax would rankle anybody making over ~150k/yr, and that's assuming the best whole family plans. Someone like myself who pays under 400/mo for really good insurance would get dinged on a 10 percent tax increase at only $50k/yr.

Single payer would have to come in at about a 5-7 percent tax increase for it to be even remotely palatable to me, and that's as someone who's all for it and think it's morally bankrupt that we don't have it.

Re: Inside the Dark, Lucrative World of Consumer Debt Collection

#140

Post by patio11 »

derefr wrote: post #129
fred_durst wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Buying your debt off for a penny on the dollar is probably the stupidest thing you could do financially. You would be trading $10,000 in credit card debt, with a fair amount of legal protections, for $4,000 in IRS debt with very few legal protections.

If you purchased a liquid asset with the $10,000 (and your creditors never found out about it in time to sue you for it), couldn't you just reliquidate it at that point and use it to pay off the IRS debt, leaving you with pure profit (and a horrible credit score)? Actually, wait, maybe not even that: given that you purchased the debt, you could legally mark it (as the creditor) as having been repaid and then petition…

Repaying negative status debts does not necessarily improve one's credit score. You can ask the credit reporting agencies to reflect the fact that you've paid it, but this is a no-op for virtually everything except mortgage applications.
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