Collection Agency Procedure To Collect Unpaid Debt - Basic Debt Collection Techniques

People are often very frightened or intimidated by Debt Collection Agencies, often because they are not sure about the powers these companies have. It is fair to say that some of the less scrupulous debt collection agencies lead people to believe that they have greater powers than they actually do, which does not help the situation.

Debt Collection Agencies are organisations that are used by other companies to collect unpaid debts. Some larger companies actually have their own debt collection departments as part of their businesses, but most will farm such work out to specialist collection agencies. Using collection agents for this kind of work is usually done on a basis of either a fixed fee or a percentage of the outstanding debt. Some of these debt collectors will specialise in actually buying the unpaid debts outright. This means that if you owe money to a company and they sell your debt to a collection agency, you then legally owe that money to the collection agency instead.

When companies sell debts to debt collection agents they only get a small proportion of the amount owed. Whatever the agency can get above what they pay is their profit, and how they make their money. The company selling such debts will then write off the difference between what you owed and what they get from the agency. The fact that the only source of income for some collection agencies is what they can collect on debts leads to them being highly motivated to get that money, which has been known to result in some unfair practices.

Debt collectors cannot enter your home or take away your possessions. Essentially all a debt collector can do is ask you for the money. The problem is that they can do this over and over and over again, and some of the more dodgy ones have been known to sound threatening or intimidating. A good debt collector will actually try to establish a positive relationship with the debtor in order to begin discussing how the debt might be repaid. Such an agreement can even involve agreeing to write off a proportion of the debt.

Debt collection agents should not contact you at inconvenient times such as very early in the morning or late at night. They can call you at work, but must stop if you tell them that your employer does not permit you to take calls while at work. No debt collector is allowed to threaten you with violence or harm in any way, or to use obscene language. Neither are they allowed to make false claims about the amount you owe, lie about their official status or legal rights, threaten to take your property or have you arrested or have your wages garnished (known as attachment of earnings in UK).

In the US the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act regulates how debt collection agencies can operate. Many states also have their own laws relating to debt collection, and in general if the state law is considered to be more restrictive than the FDCPA regulations, then the state law is what counts.

In the UK, debt collection agencies are covered by the Office of Fair Trading, who set out guidelines on how they should operate, and list examples of unfair practices, such as harassment or pretending they have more powers and rights than they do.

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