From the other side.....experience of a debt collector

ffs

Thanks for all the insights you have offered.

It's my understanding that many financial institutions have CCCS liaison departments, does your company prefer dealing with individuals, or with Debt Management Organisations, and why?

James240

Thanks for the insight louise very interesting reading ! :T

Apple_2

Hello. I'm trying to help my O/H with debt problems - I've personally never dealt with debt problems before this. Maybe it's different with banks - he's got credit card & finance house debts. What I've learnt in this short time is :

The people you speak to aren't interested in your situation or proposals if you can't follow the format ie make reduced/regular payments. My O/H is out of work therefore no income therefore no payments therefore creditor not interested.

You pass down , I assume, a conveyor belt receiving ever more threatening letters which bear no relation to the truth. As an example, he received one from XXXX saying he refused to talk to them etc thefore they had no recourse but to etc etc. I rang them and spoke to a quite reasonable man who said these were computer generated and there would be more of the same as the debt went through the system. We've kept them up to date with his situation since April.

80% of recorded delivery letters aren't answered. The call centre chasers have no background on the person at all. For example they ask for a debit card payment while the creditor has been told the debtor's bank account has been closed - copy statement sent - and their own d/d's have been refused ' account closed'.

Obviously we've got the never speaking to the same person twice syndrome.

Settlements aren't an option unless they're in excess of 75 % ( how can someone in this situation borrow money ?? )

I appreciate no institution wants to lose money, but the internal system seems to be regimented and if you can't give them the ONLY acceptable response ie regular payments you're buggered. There's no flexibility.

We have the pleasure of debt collectors yet to come.

MSE_Martin

thanks for the post louise very useful

jen_jen_2

Joe_Bloggs wrote:

Thankyou Louise1234 for your valued contribution to this forum. If your bank sells on its debt who does it go to ? If you can't answer that then what can you say about the general selling on of debt.
J_B.

jb - i dont work for a bank but have had discussions recently with cabot financial who buy debts. basically the banks dont chase the debt because it costs too much for them in wages etc to chase and collect nominal/small payments so they sell a drawer full of debts to the collector and legally trasfer the debt to them (assign it) Cabot (i reckon) pay very little for the individual debts ie pennies in the pound, they buy them in bulk and have no details of the history. the banks have recovered more money than they would of by leaving the debt in the drawer and the collectors make a profit because they pay so little for the debt in the first place.

its all basically come over from america and i see no reason why the practice wont continue to grow while companies can make money. cabot are only one company there are others but i dont really know their names, if a debt is sold to a company for collection it should be assigned rather than debt collectors that collect on behalf of a company (small but not very relevant difference)

hope this info is useful but if louise has experience too, please add.

louise1234_2

Hi guys to answer your questions:

Re benefits - we just use a comon sense approach - ie everyone with children should get child benefit, on income support or JSA possible housing & council tax benefit. The idea is just to ask if they are claiming all they are entitled to - and if they are not, get them too look into it.

RE CCCS - we don't mind at all dealing with the CCCS (or CAb or payplan) - it is customers choice how to deal with the bank. The only issue is at the moment it takes about 1 month to get an appt at CCCS & some time afterwards for them to get proposals to the bank. During this time customrs get the ususal letters & calls.

However fee charging DMC are another story. They appear to be very inefficient, lots of proposals from the get 'lost' in post. Some even insist customer makes pymt to them before they contact the bank. They are known to exaggerate expenses so they can get customers lower monthly pymts - which at the end of the day may not be best for the customer.

As you would expect, the selling of debt is done to generate minimum loss (maximum profit). Small debts are usually sold right away. The bank gets more money for debts that we have more contact numbers for, and that we have spoke to customer recently. Accounts where mail has been returned are worth less - as they need to be traced. All the small accounts are bundled up & sold for a % to debt collection agencies.

The bank usually keeps larger debts intially, seeing if any payments (however small) can be agreed. At this stage full & final settlements are available, as long as it is worth more than selling debt. On large enough debts legal action is taken at this stage - ie going to court for a CCJ. Others are sold to debt collectors.

Jedi_Master

Louise, thanks for your ongoing helpful contribution. I am interested the comments in your final paragraph that ".......full and final settlements are available, as long as it is worth more than selling the debt."

Are you able to say what sort of settlement may be on offer for an individual debt in the region of £2300 please?

Regards and best wishes.

idiot_3

nearly impossible to say.

are you working?

homeowner?

assets (car etc?)

payment record? (i.e. have you broken promises, been consistently late, even with reduced arrangements?)

how long has it been outstanding?

where is the money for repayment coming from? (if its a remortgage, forget it we wouldn't have accepted any less than 90-95% of what was outstanding.)

how much do you owe other creditors?

how much are you paying now? (if what you are paying now will take a long time, ie 5 years +, a f&f may be considered if the money you pay in a lump sum could be banked and the interest will be the same or more than what you would have eventually paid, by the time you had done it.)

etc.

i certainly could not give you a precise figure without more info. this is what what collectors will look at and more before accepting/rejecting a f&f offer.

Dammam

idiot wrote:

where is the money for repayment coming from? (if its a remortgage, forget it we wouldn't have accepted any less than 90-95% of what was outstanding.)

I recently settled with Aktiv at a little over 60% after remortgaging. I told them that this was where the money was coming from, but also that the remortgage wouldn't be viable if they wanted any more. I think we were both happy - they got their profit and I cleared my debt. The losers (because there will always be a loser somewhere in the equation) was Allied Carpets, and I DO regret that. Every defaulted agreement like mine cuts company profits which eventually leads to poor some soul getting laid off and (potentially) getting into the same downward spiral as I did.

The best people I dealt with were Masterloan, who were friendly, understanding and polite and went out of their way to help me. The worst were Nelson Guest, who were rude, abusive and threatening. Guess who got paid first?

cymply

Hi Louise,

Getting money back from over spenders must be a nightmare, it was for me when I overspent once upon a time. A very nice and understanding lady called to see us from the debt advisory board, and was surprised we had only £19 quid between us and owed £10,000.
She took all details and noted we shortly had to go to court on the first of the six cases against us.
The advise we got to solve the problems temporarily and give us some breathing space was as follows.

" Send them all one pound a month for 12 months,in fact send them all £12 quid each NOW" "Tell them its 12 months payments under the law that you are making all efforts you can and as you cannot afford to pay anymore right now, I`ll back you 100%"

Suddenly the letters stopped, the late night calls stopped from debt collectors and we got on with our lives, 8 months later everyone was happy, we all lived happily ever after!.