221–230 of 269 posts
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Do you think its financially viable to run an ethical debt collection agency?
this guy sems to be trying: http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/08/the-debt-collection-company-th/
I don't know how legit they really are, but the article sure got my attention!
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…
You are totally right! +1. The article had me at "stolen". If you owe a bit of money, some of the dipshits that call you may actually have misappropriated the collection account and are not connected to the original debtor in any way, who did not receive and will not receive a red cent. This passing of the buck helps to explain why numerous agencies may be involved: people get calls from various toms, dicks and harry…
that explains why many years ago some collector hung up on me when I kept on explaining to them that I had lost the bills and if they could resend... they couldn't do that.
There is an interesting startup in the space, trying to do things right. https://www.trueaccord.com/
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This reminds me a lot of when the department of education sold my student loans to a couple private firms. Out of the blue, I just received a couple emails from a couple companies I've never heard of asking me to give them all my information (including my SSN) in order to create an account. I deleted them immediately, assuming there was a new phishing scheme in vogue, and didn't realize what had happened until I chec…
Something's missing here - who actually paid the loan?
This is actually something I think a startup could do a really good job at disrupting, but you'd have to have a very high tolerance for both a) schleps and b) dealing with poor peoples' problems. Billions of dollars are being thrown around at companies where the average level of technical sophistication is Excel spreadsheets and the prototypical competitor is a high-school graduate with an average of N weeks of exper…
That's exactly why we started working on this problem.
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You are totally right! +1. The article had me at "stolen". If you owe a bit of money, some of the dipshits that call you may actually have misappropriated the collection account and are not connected to the original debtor in any way, who did not receive and will not receive a red cent. This passing of the buck helps to explain why numerous agencies may be involved: people get calls from various toms, dicks and harry…
It's funny because my cell phone # used to be owned by some debtor. I had to install a call blocking app because I get constant calls trying to reach some guy I've never heard of and they will never give up no matter how many times I tell them I've never heard of the guy. I suspect the crap keeps getting recycled endlessly.
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Healthcare is already rationed in the U.S. It's rationed everywhere, by definition, because there isn't (to my knowledge, anyway) any country where the (price-agnostic) demand for resources isn't more than the supply. It's just rationed in an inhumane, stupid way in the U.S. No one from the industrialized world comes "to the U.S." because of a severe illness. Rather, people come to specific doctors for new procedures…
If the US is the country with the top notch doctors, then how to you separate "they are going to the best doctor" to "they are going to the country with the best doctor"?
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Your potential employer may pull your credit report as part of a background check and decide not to hire you because you didn't feel like paying your debt. In many jurisdictions, they have to disclose that they're doing so. Fake a competing "exploding" offer to put time pressure on them. They'll write you an offer (if they're interested) quickly. Then, if they rescind the offer later because they don't like what they…
"Then, if they rescind the offer later because they don't like what they see on a credit check, threaten to sue for promissory estoppel." At which point they'll promptly hire you, and let you go in the first week, as you're "just not working out", and you're most likely in an "at will" state.
First, "at will" employment is pretty complicated. It's not as cut-and-dry as it's made out to be. Besides, this is a detrimental reliance case: you're arguing that you relied on an offer that was fraudulent, and if they fired you in the first week and couldn't show that it was part of a business layoff or due to criminal behavior on your part, you'd still have that argument.
Second, once you rescind an offer, that person's pissed. Letting that person into the building, even for a week, is not something a risk-averse company is going to do lightly. Third, companies would have all sorts of internal-publicity/morale issues in doing this: hiring someone for a week just to can him on an obviously phony performance case. Fourth, companies care as much about disparagement as about lawsuits, which is why you can often get a settlement even if you don't have grounds to sue (or, more commonly, the suit wouldn't be worth the time put into it). Of course, you shouldn't threaten to disparage in a severance negotiation, because if you don't know what you're doing you can end up unknowingly committing extortion, but it is a concern on their side.
Companies are risk-averse and want to protect their reputations and avoid headaches. Once they've rescinded the offer, a 3-5 month severance is easier than taking the risk of letting you into the building. What if your boss and team like you (and, in the first week, why wouldn't they)? Do they really want to deal with the morale mess of firing you in the first month?
Of course, this doesn't apply when offers are rescinded for legitimate reasons (whole-office shutdowns, massive layoffs) but that's not what we're talking about here.
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>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…
Actually, even without additional tax, if US government dropped Medicare, Medicaid and other state sponsored insurance systems in favor of universal coverage, it would have enough money to have world-class healthcare system without any additional taxes -- the US government _already_ spends as much on health care per capita as Germany, or France, and 30% more than UK.