Cautionary tale on not talking to creditors

[tay666]

The more difficult you make it for them, the more likely they are to move on to lower hanging fruit.

Yeah.
When they first started calling us, about 90% of the calls I hung up on because the caller couldn't speak English. I started asking at the begining of any phone call if the caller was a US citizen. If they weren't I told them that I was a US citizen and I only do business with other US citizens, if their company wanted contact me, they should have an American on the other end of the line. Then I would hang up.
I figured it would kill 2 birds with one stone. One, get them off the phone. Two, maybe send a message to quit outsourcing all the work.

And from my experience, 15 times out of 16, 94% of the time, if you tell them you are judgment proof and you explain how you are judgment proof so they know you are not bluffing, they won't even bother filing a lawsuit against you.

Agree again.
When they finally had Americans call me, I would talk to them every so often.
tell them I had no money, didn't forsee having the money, and if they wanted to sue me, they were more than welcome to try and garnish our food stamps.
Usually, about the time I would offer to give them our caseworkers phone number, they would hang up on me.
Then I wouldn't hear from them for at least a couple months.

[NewPage]

BY the time this crisis is over, most people will have crappy credit, there won't be enough 800s to sell houses and cars to, and it will be business as usual. Hell, the banks are already back to playing the same games with risky investments that got us into this hole in the first place.

Yup.

[flyinbroke]

Same here. I could hit the nuke button IF I get sued by all of the people I am delinquent on...all five of them. Chargeoffs hurt the score, but supposedly hurt less after a year or two (and probably hurt even less when you pay off a car and 40K in student loans and other cards.)

BY the time this crisis is over, most people will have crappy credit, there won't be enough 800s to sell houses and cars to, and it will be business as usual. Hell, the banks are already back to playing the same games with risky investments that got us into this hole in the first place.

[jacko]

So true. I turned off the ringer for the last 18 months. Very peaceful. If friends and family need to get a hold of me, they can send email, skype or call my skype telephone number which has voice mail. There is no use in talking to these collectors. My credit report speaks for it self.

Be proactive and protect your cash. Not sure if I will file BK.

I was speaking specifically about the flunky debt collector on the other end of the phone making minimum wage plus commissions. If you don't talk to him or her, he or she cannot do their job. The only weapon they have at their disposal is the telephone.

And I agree, everything other than calling you on the telephone is more difficult and much, much more expensive and time consuming for the debt collection industry.

The more difficult you make it for them, the more likely they are to move on to lower hanging fruit.

They just simply can't afford to sue everyone.

If no debtor ever answered the phone, most of the debt collectors would go out of business very quickly.

They rely on voluntary compliance.

Judgment proof and collection proof-- potato potata. Same thing.

If they get a judgment against you and you don't have any assets to take, no checking account, and no wages to garnish, then that judgment is a worthless piece of paper.

And from my experience, 15 times out of 16, 94% of the time, if you tell them you are judgment proof and you explain how you are judgment proof so they know you are not bluffing, they won't even bother filing a lawsuit against you.

Everyone is terrified of judgments, but if you don't have anything to lose, then you really have nothing to worry about.

If you do have something to protect, you should file bankruptcy as soon as possible to protect it.

Otherwise, just play chicken with the debt collectors. Most of the time, they will give up on you. They gave up on me.

[GoingDown]

On this, I disagree. You can make it more difficult if you do not talk to them, but there are ways to collect if you do not.

And no one is judgment proof. Collection proof perhaps, but not judgment proof.

I was speaking specifically about the flunky debt collector on the other end of the phone making minimum wage plus commissions. If you don't talk to him or her, he or she cannot do their job. The only weapon they have at their disposal is the telephone.

And I agree, everything other than calling you on the telephone is more difficult and much, much more expensive and time consuming for the debt collection industry.

The more difficult you make it for them, the more likely they are to move on to lower hanging fruit.

They just simply can't afford to sue everyone.

If no debtor ever answered the phone, most of the debt collectors would go out of business very quickly.

They rely on voluntary compliance.

Judgment proof and collection proof-- potato potata. Same thing.

If they get a judgment against you and you don't have any assets to take, no checking account, and no wages to garnish, then that judgment is a worthless piece of paper.

And from my experience, 15 times out of 16, 94% of the time, if you tell them you are judgment proof and you explain how you are judgment proof so they know you are not bluffing, they won't even bother filing a lawsuit against you.

Everyone is terrified of judgments, but if you don't have anything to lose, then you really have nothing to worry about.

If you do have something to protect, you should file bankruptcy as soon as possible to protect it.

Otherwise, just play chicken with the debt collectors. Most of the time, they will give up on you. They gave up on me.

[frogger]

The debt collector on the other end of the phone is trained to do his or her job and they only way they can do that job is if you talk to them.

On this, I disagree. You can make it more difficult if you do not talk to them, but there are ways to collect if you do not.

And no one is judgment proof. Collection proof perhaps, but not judgment proof.

[flyinbroke]

I actually had a lawyer tell me he would NEVER make me do a 13 since I don't own property, they cannot garnish in this state, but I make too much for a 7. He is helping with the suit against the CA because they have about 23 violations of FDCPA, and even more of the TCPA. The OC got the debt back and admitted they had no contract or app on file, so this debt could conceivably go away.

If someone can't pay any of their debts, then BK would be logical. This atty liked my tactic of continuing to pay those I can pay (most are CUs with cross collateralization, student loans that can never be discharged, and a couple of cards recently used for furniture before the emergencies that came up leaving me unable to pay all) while blowing off a few....he said a suit can happen but there are so many right now and I really don't have anything that is not exempt.

[GoingDown]

Exactly!

A lot of the Newbies here don't know this, but playing chicken really is the way to go if you don't have much to lose.

I don't even get calls from any of my creditors anymore. The debts are so old now that I think they are about ready to move on to the zombie junk debt buyer phase soon. Then the phone calls will start up again. Briefly. Until I send them all a new round of cease and desist communication letters. I have them all ready to go. I'm just waiting to pounce on them whenever they get around to calling me again.

[flyinbroke]

Sometimes it is simply cheaper and easier to do nothing.

That's why I haven't bothered to file BK yet.

If you are judgment proof, they can file lawsuits against you, but it doesn't really matter because they can't take anything from you, so all they end up with is useless pieces of paper with the word judgment written on them.

Only one creditor has sued me, over a lousy $300 credit card. They haven't received a penny of that judgment yet.

The rest of my charged off credit cards are beyond the statute of limitations for Arizona, so they are worthless debts. If they sue me, I will fight them in court and win based on the SOL.

So for someone like me, it doesn't make any sense to file BK.

I waited them out and played chicken with them.

And only one out 16 charged off credit cards sued me. So, no, they do not sue everyone.

Same here. While I have decent income, much of it is exempt, and the rest cannot be garnished. I had a choice since I could afford to pay 13 of 18 of my creditors: file a 13 and lose every last dime for the next five years, or play chicken and wait them out while paying for everything with cash. I chose the latter. Of the five delinquent accounts only one had a settlement offer. One went to a CA, who screwed up royally and I am going to sue (the OC admitted in a letter that they have no application or original contract on file.) A third said if I did not set up a payment plan by Friday it would go to a CA. The fourth and fifth are with the same bank; they have not made any offers at all. While one closed my account when I refused their terms, I kept paying them (Chase) because they do sue at the drop of a hat.

I am still far from the SOL but right now BK is not worth it for me. YMMV.

[GoingDown]

I can give you an answer as to why some people put off filing.
They don't have the money to hire a lawyer.
That was our problem. We wanted to file 3 years ago.
But it took us 3 years to scrape up $1800 to actually be able to file.

Now we can actually start seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

Sometimes it is simply cheaper and easier to do nothing.

That's why I haven't bothered to file BK yet.

If you are judgment proof, they can file lawsuits against you, but it doesn't really matter because they can't take anything from you, so all they end up with is useless pieces of paper with the word judgment written on them.

Only one creditor has sued me, over a lousy $300 credit card. They haven't received a penny of that judgment yet.

The rest of my charged off credit cards are beyond the statute of limitations for Arizona, so they are worthless debts. If they sue me, I will fight them in court and win based on the SOL.

So for someone like me, it doesn't make any sense to file BK.

I waited them out and played chicken with them.

And only one out 16 charged off credit cards sued me. So, no, they do not sue everyone.

[tay666]

and I have to ask myself why they are waiting so long to file and face the inevitable...though filing is a very hard personal choice to do, like admitting you have a problem with drinking and actually doing something about it. Denial is just a river in Africa, and I get that.

I can give you an answer as to why some people put off filing.
They don't have the money to hire a lawyer.
That was our problem. We wanted to file 3 years ago.
But it took us 3 years to scrape up $1800 to actually be able to file.

Now we can actually start seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

[JackBondLove]

When I was in delaying mode, I started asking for settlement offers. I told them I could leverage some exempt assets (i.e., home) or even take a distribution from my retirement accounts if "the numbers would work out." When one would give me their "best offer", I would say that I needed to get all my creditors' best offers before I could sit down with a bankruptcy attorney and determine if it would be the best course of action for me.

Bottom line - I never got served by anyone before filing Chapter 7.

[GoingDown]

I know better than to ignore the ringer on the home phone. They start calling the cell phone, the work phone, neighbors, relatives, whoever they can call. Much better to talk with them once or twice and move on.

Without knowing exactly when we would file, I didn't want to deal with process servers showing up at my door (or my job), notices from courts, etc etc. The biggest reason is that I don't intend to be poor all of my life. If for some reason we didn't follow through with the bankruptcy (an option that was on the table for quite some time) I didn't want the added burden of judgments to deal with. Even now that we've filed, I managed to avoid having any judgments on my credit report. I had one potential employer tell me that they would do a credit check, that bankruptcy was not a problem, but that if I had any judgments against me that they couldn't hire me. It's unfortunate that my credit report has such a bearing on job opportunities but it's reality.

But it won't be just talking to them once or twice. And what I have noticed is that even if you talk to them on the phone, unless you agree to make a payment schedule and then start paying them, they keep calling, and they start calling other numbers just to put more pressure on you to pay up. And each time you talk to them, they are gathering information about you. Most debtors are not old pros at talking to debt collectors, so they make the mistake of being drawn into the conversation and the debt collector starts pushing their buttons and before long the debtor ends up coughing some information or even worse, a payment of some sort.

The debt collector on the other end of the phone is trained to do his or her job and they only way they can do that job is if you talk to them.

The choice is always up to you. Do you want to make the debt collector's job easy or difficult?

And ultimately, unless you can afford to pay the debt in full or settle it, you run the risk of getting a judgment against you.

[keptdigging]

By definition any of our reports here are anecdotal.

In my case Chase is just threatening but Amex already has. At about 90 days.

Since I'm probably just going to push the big read BK button, I guess I should encourage them all to sue @ over 300 a pop.

Here's a bonus...

Hypothetical TT: "When did you know you were bankrupt?"
Me: "When Amex sued me."

[WhatMoney]

One of the best things we can do to help the next guy down the line is to spread the word about the new more aggressive tactics. I wrote another thread with that idea so I'll stop now.

I'm not convinced there are any new aggressive tactics in general. So far we have a few anecdotal reports of one bank, Chase, suing debtors that they believe have assets a bit earlier than reported in prior years.

But do you realize how large Chase is? Chase is the number one issuer of VISA brand credit cards in the world.

JPMorgan Chase, in its current structure, is the result of the combination of several large U.S. banking companies over the last decade including Chase Manhattan Bank, J.P. Morgan & Co., Bank One, Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual. Going back further, its predecessors include major banking firms among which are Chemical Bank, Manufacturers Hanover, First Chicago Bank, National Bank of Detroit, Texas Commerce Bank, Providian Financial and Great Western Bank.

So of course, any shift in collection policy with Chase will cause an increase of reports here on the BK forum. I've yet to here of other major banks suing earlier. The fact is, if you look like you have assets on paper, an OC may sue you instead of selling your debt. The numbers are larger today because there are a record number of CC defaults today.

The promises of automated filing etc, are so far just promises. It will still cost filing fees when a CA wants to sue 3000/day, or whatever crazy number. In my state, that would result in $27 MILLION dollars in court fees per month per collector! So I say bring it on - our State needs the money.