subject: Debt Collectors For Beginners: When A Debt Collector Is On The Phone [print this page] Welcome back to debt collection 101, your beginner's guide to debt collection. In the last article I wrote about two types of debt collectors, third party debt collectors and in house collection agents. I explained what skip tracing was and how a skilled debt collector will use it to find new information on a debtor that is difficult to locate.
When the debt collectors do find their debtors they will contact them and inform them of their overdue accounts. If it is a necessity, they will go over terms of sale or the credit contracts, and then they will request payment. When a collection agent calls, they may ask you for information, or a skilled one may simply utilize their listening skills to try to figure out why the account went delinquent and if you have the means to pay it back.
In general, a debt collector will have the capacity to offer a repayment plan or some other way to make it possible for the debtor to pay their bill. Sometimes, they are capable of finding solutions to debtor's financial problems that the debtors were not able to think of themselves. As experts in the field of finance, they might even be able to refer debtors in trouble to a good debt counselor or offer some useful advice.
If a debtor agrees to pay, then the job of the debt collector is almost complete. At this point the collections agent will record this commitment and will make a point of checking up on this later to ensure that the payment was made.
If the person in debt refuses to pay, the debt collector will then draw up a statement about their delinquency for the credit department of whoever they work for. In extreme cases, typically when there is a lot of money being discussed, collectors might call for repossession, disconnect service, or even hand over the account to the company attorney. To Be Continued In Parts 3,4, 5, and 6.
