Creditors Calling Nonstop
November 24th, 2008 at 11:33pm Under Harassing Phone Calls
I truly hate being behind in my bills.
We’ve been here before… a couple of tough spots when we got behind a payment or two. Usually, it’s been because of something happening in my business (I’m self-employed). We’ve always managed to get ourselves caught up pretty quickly.
But if you fall behind on payments to credit card companies or mortgage companies, you find out right away that one thing you don’t have control over is the phone. Yes… there’s the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act. Yes, it dictates that they can’t call before 8am or after 9pm.
But you can bet your last nickel (I don’t recommend it) that they’ll start calling at 8:01am and stop at 8:59pm.
Hopefully, you’ve got more than a nickel laying around.
In our case, we’ve had some days where we didn’t. Like I’ve said before, we didn’t intend to get behind. We certainly haven’t skipped paying bills on purpose. It just happened.
But the nonstop phone calls can be enough to drive you batty. It’s as though each time the phone rings, it’s talking to you. It tells you that you’re a failure. It says, “See there? You’re not going to make it.”
Well… do yourself a favor. Unplug the darn phone. You’re not going to answer it anyway. Just unplug it. After all, it doesn’t matter if you just talked to Capital One yesterday… they want to talk to you again today. Citi, Chase, WaMu, Wells Fargo, American Express… they’re all the same way. You’re on the dialer. The person you’re talking to can’t stop it. It’s some other department. They’re in India. You need to talk to someone in America. You have to do it in writing. Just pay your bill… did you ever think of that? Believe me… I’ve heard it all.
If they would just listen to what you said and stop the dialers, it would be OK. But they don’t. The dialers are set up to call you until you pay.
What’s worse is that they have attorneys who decide just exactly how frequently they can call before it would be considered “harassing.” And they have money to pay those attorneys. You don’t. Otherwise, you’d pay your bill, right?
There are a few things I’ve found that can help. Which one(s) you choose to use will depend upon your situation. Are you considering filing bankruptcy? Do you think you’ll be caught up soon? Do you think you can at least work out a payment plan? Well… all of those are factors.
No sense pissing off one of your creditors to the point that they file a lawsuit and try to win a judgment against you… particularly if you can avoid it.
And by the way… with so many mortgages defaulting and so many people out of work… right now is a great time to call up your creditors and negotiate. They’ll try to push you into a cash settlement. But if you had cash, you’d have paid that payment, right? Who knows what they’re thinking. In any event, there’s a trained negotiator on the other end of the phone trying to sell you the solution that earns them the best commission. You need to keep pushing until you get a better arrangement.
What if you aren’t in a position to work out a deal?
More to come.
By Average Joe 3 comments
