4. If all else fails, see if you can negotiate a reasonable payment arrangement that doesn't involve wage garnishment. This can be hard because you will have little leverage at this stage.

#FDCPA #DebtCollection

3. See if the judgment creditor has violated debt collection law in some way. This gives you leverage to fight back and make the problem go away.

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#FDCPA #DebtCollection

2. See if the judgment was invalid. If they failed to serve you with valid process, AND you can prove it (for example, you didn't live at the address where service was made) you can sometimes get a the judgment set aside.

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#FDCPA #DebtCollection

What if the debt collector already has a judgment against you and is trying to garnish wages?

You have a few options.

1. See if you qualify for an exemption to garnishment. The most common of these are "Head of Household" (you are the main financial support for one or more other people) or if your income is from retirement or disability benefits.

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#FDCPA #DebtCollection

#AI #GenerativeAI #DebtCollection: "An industry historically known for harassing and intimidating people down on their luck is replacing human debt collectors with AI-powered ones, in a move that one company says will "change debt collections forever."

AI tools will take the industry into “a new era of debt collections,” according to New York and Bangalore-based Skit.ai. A digital voice agent—the new incarnation of a robocall, using AI chatbots and text-to-speech capabilities for dynamic, responsive conversations—could make millions of outbound calls in just a few days, the company claimed, contacting and requesting payment from a collection agency’s entire portfolio of debtors at a far lower cost than human staff.

Human agents could use AI at every stage of the collection process, the company’s blog claims, delivering “instant scalability” through “end-to-end automation,” which of course would boost productivity and lower costs. On the other hand, for someone on the other end of the call, the chance to speak with an actual human during the process becomes ever more distant."

https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvjmm5/debt-collectors-want-to-use-ai-chatbots-to-hustle-people-for-money

Our dystopian AI future.

"AI tools will take the industry into “a new era of debt collections,” according to New York and Bangalore-based Skit.ai. A digital voice agent—the new incarnation of a robocall, using AI chatbots and text-to-speech capabilities for dynamic, responsive conversations—could make millions of outbound calls in just a few days, the company claimed, contacting and requesting payment from a collection agency’s entire portfolio of debtors at a far lower cost than human staff."

#ai #debtcollection #chatbots #voiceai

https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvjmm5/debt-collectors-want-to-use-ai-chatbots-to-hustle-people-for-money?utm_source=VICE_Twitter&utm_medium=social+

3. Credit reports—all three originals. They contain a rich set of data you can use to find discrepancies in the debt collector's claim.

4. Debt collections communications—everything the debt collector said to you, and you said to them, on the phone or in writing.

Get all this information, and you'll be surprised at how many debt collection violations you might find. And that gives you leverage.

#FDCPA #DebtCollection

Before you enter battle with a debt collector, make sure to do your pre-battle recon and planning!

Here are the four sources of information you must gather as step one of your debt collection battle.

1. Your own bank accounts. They will show what you paid, and when.

2. Account statements, if you have them, for the collection account. They will also show what was paid, when it was paid, and how much the balance is.

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#FDCPA #DebtCollection

This is a good thing, it’s about time! Google to Ban Financial Lending Apps from Accessing User Photos, Contacts to prevent online harassment by debt collectors. With a potential recession looming, it is important to protect debtors from unethical and illegal practices. https://www.pcmag.com/news/google-to-ban-financial-lending-apps-from-accessing-user-photos-contacts #finance #financeapps #debtcollection #loans #lending #borrowing #debt #privacy #surveillance

So if you have a case, the other side pays for your lawyer. Most lawyers who handle these cases—including us—don't charge the client anything upfront because the other side pays it all in the end.

That means you get to stop debt collectors in their tracks, and you get a lawyer, for FREE.

Pretty cool, right?

#FDCPA #DebtCollection

But how can you afford the lawyer to get there?

Easy.

The FDCPA provides that a debt collector has to pay your legal bills if they broke the law, including the costs of filing the lawsuit, along with "a reasonable attorney’s fee as determined by the court."

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#FDCPA #DebtCollection

When they break the law, you're entitled to sue them for any damages you've suffered, which can include out of pocket expenses, emotional harm, and more. And you get to ask for $1,000 of additional "statutory damages"—basically, a civil fine—on top of that.

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#FDCPA #DebtCollection

How do you get a FREE lawyer to fight a debt collector?

It's easy. Find a way they broke the law.

The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act has nine sections banning debt collection abuses—with about 50 sub-parts in total—and debt collectors find ways to break the law every day.

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#FDCPA #DebtCollection

You can do it on the phone, but it's even better to do it in writing if you have their address.

Once you tell them that phone calls are never convenient, they must stop calling.

If they don't, you can sue them. Because they're breaking the law.

This trick also works for text messages, emails, even letters if that's what you want.

But phone calls? Let's put them out of that business forever.

#FDCPA #DebtCollection

Debt collector phone calls, in particular, are what people hate the most about debt collectors. So let's see how to make phone calls unprofitable for all debt collectors.

A debt collector can never contact you in a way or at a time at a time that's "inconvenient" for you. That's in subsection (a).

How does a debt collector know? When you tell them these magic words:

"It's never convenient for you to call me."

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#FDCPA #DebtCollection

Here's our second favorite way to sue a debt collector:

Violating the "communications" provisions of 1692c.

It's a favorite because its's often the biggest pain point for our clients.

Their phones ring off the hook. The callers manipulate them or waste their time. They scare them into spending money they don't have and maybe don't even owe.

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#FDCPA #DebtCollection

If a debt collector has misled you, lied to you, or tricked you in any way, you get to sue them and make them do the right thing—even if they don't want to.

#FDCPA #DebtCollection

If I could only use one part of the law to fix debt collection abuse, "false and misleading" is the one I'd use. Because debt collectors fall into this trap all the time.

Now, there are dozens of other ways debt collectors violate this law—especially when they try to sue consumers—but these are the top two.

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#FDCPA #DebtCollection

2. If the debt collector reports ANY information to the credit bureau that's not accurate—any date, any balance, any payment amount, any other number that's objectively false— you've caught them red-handed in a violation.

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#FDCPA #DebtCollection

So if you have a green card showing they got your dispute letter and you have a credit report showing they later told a credit bureau about your debt, and they didn't note that the debt was disputed, you've caught them red-handed in a violation.

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#FDCPA #DebtCollection