
Inside the Dark, Lucrative World of Consumer Debt Collection - aet
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/15/magazine/bad-paper-debt-collector.html
======
blhack
This is one of the most unbelievable articles I've ever read.

If you didn't read it all the way through, do so over lunch or something; it's
amazing.

The idea of "millions of dollars" worth of debt being traded for around on
thumb drives, and that all those thumb drives really contain are excel
spreadsheets is _mind boggling_. Those people in those spreadsheets are _real
people_ , and they're being completely duhumanized.

Also the fact that debt is being purchased for 1/12 of a penny is completely
just...unbelievable.

Honestly this whole article reads like some dystopian nightmare. Shady former
criminals trading peoples' lives around like it's nothing.

Horrifying.

~~~
eli
Sure, but on the other hand, let's say you run a small business. At some point
you have customers who don't pay. What do you do? Write it off as a total
loss? 1/12 is better than nothing.

~~~
shkkmo
It's not 1/12th of the debt, it's 1/1200th of the debt.

~~~
eli
OK, I agree that part is a little ridiculous but only in the "why bother"
sense.

~~~
kazinator
It's probably the same thing like gambling to those people. Or penny stock
trading. The reasoning is probably like this: at 1/1200 rate, I can cheaply
buy a whole crapload of debt. And based on the time-honored principle "if you
throw enough shit at a wall, some of it will stick", if just a small
percentage of those debts pays out, I will make a profit even if the rest are
junk.

~~~
klipt
At that rate, why didn't the creditor try sell the debt to the debtor?
Effectively saying "you pay me 1/1200th, then your debt is owed to yourself
and you can call it quits."

~~~
patio11
This is a very common misunderstanding in this thread, so I will answer it
here once. The _portfolio_ is worth a penny on the dollar because it is a mix
of quarter debts, dime debts, and "not even worth a 1/1000th of a penny"
debts, and the _mix is known to be skewed towards crap_. If the mix were known
to be largely collectible debts, it would have been priced near 30 cents or
more. The portfolio has been worked and the easily collectible debts - working
phone numbers, responsible debtors with capability to pay - _has been
collected already_.

Even _calling people to offer terms_ isn't profitable at 1/1200th of a $250
AT&T receivable and much of the portfolio is _physically incapable_ of paying
the two cents! The collector is hoping to get literally three in a hundred to
pick up the phone and take an offer of $150, the bulk of which goes to labor
to call them.

~~~
osamet67
This. People don't understand the (bad) economics of current debt collection
efforts.

------
AdmiralAsshat
Advice from someone who works on debt collection software for a living: never,
ever let a check bounce. Returned checks operate in a legal loophole that
circumvents most of the consumer protection afforded to regular debt.
Collection agencies can begin pursuing it immediately, can begin reporting it
to the credit bureaus immediately, and the interest rate they're allowed to
charge on it is ridiculous.

~~~
opendais
Do you think its financially viable to run an ethical debt collection agency?

~~~
AdmiralAsshat
You'd have to first define what constitutes "ethical" as distinct from
"legal". If you're of the opinion that the very practice of collecting debt is
scummy or unethical, then no. Assuming you will allow for at least SOME form
of "ethical" debt collection, we'd have to narrow down what kinds. For
instance, just off the top of my head, you've got: \- Commercial Debt \-
Medical Debt \- Student Loans \- Bad Checks

Within that you conceivably have debts whose collection is perhaps ethical by
nature but not ethical in practice. For instance, as I said earlier,
collection on bad checks circumvent many normal collection laws, and you can
thus have interest rates of 200% or higher. Another example would be Student
Loans, which have their own set of ridiculous loopholes that allow the debt to
persist past bankruptcy, past retirement, etc. As someone who was still in
college myself only a few years ago, the idea of the financial burden imposed
on me for the rest of my life simply for doing the thing that society
practically strong-armed me into doing seems, to me, ridiculous; for that
reason I am hesitant to call any form of Student Debt collection "ethical"
simply because the laws which govern it are atrocious.

With that said, I have dealt with many agencies who at least tried to operate
on an "ethical" model (usually they collected on medical debt), and they
seemed polite and reasonable in their collection efforts. Remember, they're in
the business to make money. Some agencies will go for the "Make the debtor's
life as miserable as possible to make them pay up" tactic, which includes
harassment, lawsuits, garnishments, etc. I deal with them frequently, and I
think they're the scum of the Earth (primarily because they talk to me in what
I imagine is the same tone as they talk to debtors). Others, however, will
simply try to get what they can, and if they CAN'T--i.e. they realize that
continuing to call a guy about a debt when he's already stated that he has no
job and no savings would be like squeezing blood from a stone--they'll stop
wasting their time and move on to an account that would be more profitable.

Much of the work done by agencies these days is not only getting people to
pay, but finding out who is more LIKELY to pay so that the agency can focus
its efforts accordingly. This analysis might include things like the line of
business, their credit score, their location (they usually figure that areas
with a higher average income are more likely to pay), etc.

To answer your question succinctly: probably. It would center primarily on
whether the percentage of the portfolio that actually pays can sustain the
percentage that you're willing to let go when pursuing them further would
entail questionable tactics.

~~~
derefr
> As someone who was still in college myself only a few years ago, the idea of
> the financial burden imposed on me for the rest of my life simply for doing
> the thing that society practically strong-armed me into doing seems, to me,
> ridiculous; for that reason I am hesitant to call any form of Student Debt
> collection "ethical" simply because the laws which govern it are atrocious.

What happens when you don't pay your Student Loans for years and years? Since
it's a "guaranteed loan", it can't actually (continue to) impact your credit
rating, can it? So could you effectively decide to just "let it ride" until
you die of old age, never having paid a cent of it?

If so, I think this is basically the idea behind of guaranteeing the loan in
the first place: to give the people who can't pay their debt the ability to
just ignore it forever.

~~~
mariodiana
"Guaranteed" means the government -- ultimately -- guarantees the banks that
they'll get their money. But what that really means is that the borrower of a
student loan lacks almost all of the consumer protections that any other
borrow has. The government will garnish any wages, social security or
disability checks, or anything else they can get their hands on. And that goes
on until the debt is paid or you die.

~~~
sjg007
People have done this. If you search around Google you can find details. Your
credit is ruined for 7+ years but in default the loan stops accruing interest.
The government will pay the loan off but then the government will garnish
wages and tax refunds at a specific percentage until the principal is repaid.

------
nostromo
I think that borrowers should have the right of first refusal when their debt
is sold.

For example, if you're about to sell $1.00 worth of my debt to someone for
$0.10, first you must offer it to me at the same cost: $0.10.

~~~
Terr_
That _seems_ simple and fair at first, but I think it actually creates more
problems than it solves.

First, you get a horrible incentive to _not_ repay debts:

1\. A relatively innocent and good-natured Bank lends a jerk $1.00

2\. The jerk refuses to pay it back, _knowing_ the bank can't transfer it to
someone who isn't a pushover without giving him a steeply-discounted offer
first

3\. In response all loan requirements and interest rates rise for everybody

Secondly, it fucks up the negotiations, because would-be buyers can infer
something when the creditor doesn't snap up their own debt:

1\. The Bank offers the debt for $0.10

2\. The debtor _doesn 't_ repay because he legitimately can't scrape up that
much

3\. The Bank offers the debt for $0.10, but _nobody_ wants to buy it, because
they can infer that the debtor has nothing

4\. The Bank offers the debt for $0.09... (begin loop)

Thirdly, it's a logistical nightmare. The Bank can't just combine the debt of
it's 1000 deadbeat debtors and sell it off to a debt collection agency for a
lump sum. No, it needs to send 1000 mailing notifications and 1000 second-
notifications and wait 30 days, etc... And then 120 of them buy their own
debts, and the bank can't _re-price_ it's set of 880 accounts without sending
880 mailing notifications (begin loop)

Fourth, what happens if it's not a straight sale? Suppose the Bank barters
your debt to a collection agency for a thing (like privately-held stock) in
the collection agency? You can't buy your debt because you can't provide what
the Bank is looking for... And then the bank can just sell whatever-it-is
later.

 __TLDR: __Exploding legal complexity combined with shady /manipulative
actions from everybody.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
But you're getting shady/manipulative actions already.

The only difference is that this approach would favour debtors, not lenders.

It's not as if banks don't expect _exactly the benefits you 're not allowing
debtors_ when their own debts blow up.

If banks get bail-outs - and do they ever - why shouldn't ordinary people?

~~~
hnal943
It favors deadbeats against responsible lenders because the costs of borrowing
would necessarily go up to protect the bank against additional losses.

------
enraged_camel
I find it very scary that huge portions of our economy are basically houses of
cards built upon more houses of cards. We're so desperate to generate
circulation for money that we've invented an intricate set of rules where it's
OK to pretend that you have money, as long as you _promise_ to actually have
it at some point in the future. And then of course another set of rules has to
be invented to manage the risk of that particular future not coming to
fruition.

My mind bends, but cannot wrap around why this _game_ is necessary.

~~~
qq66
Well, lending is a very important function in an economy. Without lending, you
could never invest more capital than you had on hand... If you had a handmade
widget that you were producing for $10, and could only sell for $5, but a
million-dollar factory would let you produce 100,000 widgets a day for $2
each, lending is the only way to get into business.

It's not the use of debt that's a problem, it's the misuse of debt.

~~~
BallinBige
PwC put together one of the more comprehensive reports regarding the 'value of
collection agencies in the U.S.'

[http://healpay.com/assets/2007_pwc_collection_industry_study...](http://healpay.com/assets/2007_pwc_collection_industry_study.pdf)

------
patio11
This is actually something I think a startup could do a _really_ good job at
disrupting, but you'd have to have a very high tolerance for both a) schleps
and b) dealing with poor peoples' problems.

Billions of dollars are being thrown around at companies where the average
level of technical sophistication is Excel spreadsheets and the prototypical
competitor is a high-school graduate with an average of N weeks of experience
in the industry.

~~~
osamet67
That's exactly why we started working on this problem.

------
ams6110
I was called by a collector once. Old medical bill, the clinic had sent it to
an old address and the mail forwarding had expired. Why they never called or
tracked me down I don't know, but they eventually sold it to a collector who
had no trouble finding my phone number.

When they called I was confused at first, then remembered and realized it was
legit, paid it, end of story. They were utterly professional and courteous
about everything.

~~~
forca
Medical debt rankles me like nothing else. The US, supposedly the most
advanced nation on Earth has the worst notion of all: health care for profit.
Simply evil. Health care is a basic human right. Full stop. Health care should
never be based on one's ability to pay. Never.

I pray I see socialised medicine in the US in my lifetime. If Hilary Clinton
gets elected, the push for this will be stronger than the thin edge of a wedge
President Obama has managed. We need a full single-payer tax-based system.

I pay the ridiculous sum of $700 US dollars a month for my family's health
insurance. If we raise taxes by 10% for every American, we could have awesome
health care. I'd gladly take the 10% tax over $8400 a year I pay now. Sick,
capitalist theft. I feel I've been politely robbed every pay period.

~~~
bequanna
I agree, but I think there is too much at stake for too many high net-worth
individuals and corporations for the US to make a change to the single-payer
system.

A 10% rise in taxes? That's a heck of a lot of money. The majority of the rich
won't buy into it, they'll fight it tooth and nail.

In my opinion, I think it depends on how well appeals for/against a single-
payer system resonate with the middle class. Do they generally feel that they
will be subsidized, or be subsidizing?

Heck, even some poor people (who would be net winners) won't even support it
on principle.

~~~
xyzzyz
>A 10% rise in taxes? That's a heck of a lot of money. The majority of the
rich won't buy into it, they'll fight it tooth and nail.

But now they pay insurance anyway, aren't they?. With a single-payer system,
their contribution would actually probably fall.

~~~
selectodude
Right now, if high net worth individuals pay insurance at all (it's usually an
employer provided benefit), it's pre-tax and even the best cadillac plans for
the entire family are ~2k/mo. A 10 percent increase in income tax would rankle
anybody making over ~150k/yr, and that's assuming the best whole family plans.
Someone like myself who pays under 400/mo for really good insurance would get
dinged on a 10 percent tax increase at only $50k/yr.

Single payer would have to come in at about a 5-7 percent tax increase for it
to be even remotely palatable to me, and that's as someone who's all for it
and think it's morally bankrupt that we don't have it.

~~~
jjoonathan
The average person in the US is already paying ~200% as much as a citizen of
your typical single-payer country for coverage. Not only are we paying twice
as much for coverage, _we don 't even have universal coverage after paying
twice as much_.

[http://healthcarereform.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourc...](http://healthcarereform.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=005522#V)

------
yonran
When the collectors call the debtors, can the debtor demand a paper trail to
prove that the collector is the actual owner of the debt? Why should a debtor
pay any amount of money to a random person who calls them and says they bought
an old debt?

~~~
delinka
In the USA: Yes, the alleged debtor can insist on proof. The bad news: If
collector mails the debtor, and the debtor doesn't respond for 30 days, the
collector can report the debt to the credit reporting agencies. And we all
know what a pain it is to get _anything_ corrected on a credit report.

~~~
a8da6b0c91d
I don't understand why people freak out so much about their credit reports. I
have no idea what my credit score is and don't care. I guess it's poor people
who need credit to scrape by on a regular basis? If you have a lot of cash it
seems like a completely empty threat. The bank is not going to care about your
$400 unpaid comcast bill when writing you a mortgage. People who have declared
bankruptcy twice are getting low rates. Tell the collectors to fuck off and go
ahead and tell experian.

I got a $1200 medical bill, about half of which was BS. I sent a certified
letter disputing the invalid charges. I never got a reply, so I never paid. I
started getting calls from a collector. I blocked the numbers, end of story. I
similarly never paid some bullshit charge from a landlord. These unpaid
"debts" have never impacted me in the slightest.

If someone is trying to screw you, just don't pay. I don't understand why
people are such cowards about it.

~~~
Iftheshoefits
This is the worst possible advice a person could give. Collectors can and will
go to court to get a Judgement (capital-J), which allows them to garnish wages
(among other things) and in some cases is actually worse than declaring
bankruptcy.

"If you have a lot of cash" speaks volumes about where you're coming from,
though. Congratulations on being one of the very privileged few in this
country who can afford to do what you suggest. The vast majority of the rest
simply cannot.

~~~
a8da6b0c91d
They pursue a judgement on sums up around thousands of dollars where the
charges are clearly valid. There is no way that's going to happen on some
piddly $400 amount that you have documented is substantially BS. What I'm
talking about is people I've seen in recent threads freaked out about some
comcast charge affecting their credit report. Don't waste a minute of your
time dealing with them or the credit bureaus. Just don't pay.

~~~
cnp
This is beyond idiotic. My credit score is HORRIBLE due to little things like
this accumulating in my youth. Pay everything, always -- always pay -- always.
It WILL come back to fuck you over just when you need those extra few points.

~~~
vinceguidry
Not so idiotic. I ran up a modest amount of debt in my early twenties, never
paid any of it. Fast forward ten years. Found a decent job, look to buy a car,
come to find out my credit report is mostly empty. Most everything had dropped
off. Capital One gave me a credit card, I've been building up credit and
savings over the last year.

If you have the discipline to say, "no new debt," which isn't that hard to do
after you've already fucked up your score, then you can hit thirty with a
clean slate.

~~~
UrMomReadsHN
Its hard to impossible to rent an apartment around here with a low credit
score. That wasn't the case several years ago. I am guessing it will just keep
getting more prevalent so you may have to live in your parents garage util 30
while waiting for that old debt to drop off your credit report.

~~~
learc83
Can't you just offer to pay a larger deposit or several months up front?

~~~
michaelochurch
_Can 't you just offer to pay a larger deposit or several months up front?_

Can't you just offer the landlord occasional use of your boat and promise to
pull family connections (everyone has them, no?) to get White House
internships for his kids?

~~~
learc83
I'm not saying paying extra is feasible for someone without much money, but
this whole comment thread was a response to one guy who basically said credit
doesn't matter much if you aren't poor.

Going with the implicit assumption that we're talking about someone who's
making a pretty good bit of money, but who has a bad credit rating, I'm only
arguing that it's not impossible to rent an apartment.

I love your blog by the way.

~~~
a8da6b0c91d
I'm not rich. I make about 150 right now, which around here isn't much. I am
just informing you cowed bougie woosies that your "oh noes my credit report"
panics are not grounded in reality. If you pay your legit bills on time and
make a solid living, credit is not a valid concern when someone is trying to
fuck you. In cities like Philadelphia and Baltimore _most_ of the households
are chronically arrears on utilities. Guess what, they all have cell phones
and DirectTV and cheap mortgages, and their utilities are never cut off.
Mortgage originators are desperate for truly credit worthy customers.

Some dings from the racketeers _might_ be a problem if you want to rent a $4K
apartment on a $90K income, but even then I doubt it.

I almost get the sense that upper middle class nerds have no idea how most of
society actually operates and how strong a position solid income puts you in.

~~~
Iftheshoefits
> I almost get the sense that upper middle class nerds have no idea how most
> of society actually operates.... <

Oh, the irony. Unless, of course, you meant to lump yourself in with the
"clueless" upper middle class. $150k/yr is actually beyond middle class.
That's affluent, at minimum. It's not "rich" in the sense that the average
person earning that income could just stop working whenever he wanted, but for
a single person that's top 5% territory, and for a family it's top 10%.

For what it's worth, my household income, including passive income from rental
property, is north of $200k. I know very well what having a high income
affords. I've also been on the other end of the spectrum, near homeless when
my impoverished single mother was raising me and my brother. I'll be blunt:
you're the clueless one here. You have no idea what you're talking about, and
your comments make you seem out of touch and, frankly, a bit gormless.

------
wtbob
It's a bit of a pipe dream, but it seems to me that this is a perfect use-case
for digital signatures. If I sign over debt to Bill, and he signed it over to
Jim and Nancy, and then Jim collects it and Nancy signs it over to Stu, and
then Stu find that it's already been collected, then Stu and Jim can compare
provenances and sue/beat-up/whatever Bill.

The real question is how to make digital signatures work for people at that
level. That's a really tough question; I don't have the answer there. Maybe
Excel could have some sort of row-signature cell type, which could stack (e.g.
First Martian Bank would sign each row upon issuance, then each seller would
just sign it again). It'd be even better if it weren't just a statically-
signed document, but could also document stuff like 'Joe Smith paid down $320
in principal.'

Gosh, almost sounds like Bitcoin or a similar protocol would make sense here …

------
thisone
And then there's those of us who have non-existent debt sold on to these
people.

About 12 years ago, I started getting letters from a debt agency about a
medical bill that I did not owe. Letters that I forwarded to the insurance
company.

Then the phone calls started, with people trying to convince me to pay a bill
I didn't owe.

It took about 9 months to get it sorted out. What had happened is that the
doctor had improperly billed the insurance, for a fee they had already billed
for, and the insurance refused to pay it.

The doctor's office sent it to collections. And the collections agency would
only stop harassing me if I got the doctors office to call them and admit they
had billed incorrectly.

That was not fun.

------
bengali3
missed it the first time, but check out the link at the end article to play
'Bad Paper'

[http://static.fusion.net/badpaper/](http://static.fusion.net/badpaper/)

------
Mz
This is sort of funny stuff to me:

 _Not long after getting out of prison, Wilson took a job as a debt collector.
He proved quite good at it, and soon he bought some paper and opened his first
agency. Later, he also became a debt broker or dealer, a type of role he knew
quite well: “I used to buy pounds of weed, all right, and then break it down
and sell ounces to the other guys, who were then breaking it down and selling
dime bags on the corner, right? Well, that’s what [I’m] doing in debt.”_

I mean a lot of it has comical tones -- granted, darkly comical. But, hey, I
have probably had more real financial problems then most folks on HN and my
dad once collected about 98% of the defaulted debts kept in (probably) a shoe
box at a small business he worked for. So I have seen kind of both sides of
this quite close to home.

------
justifier
The people's bailout was a form of protest that resonated with me:

they take donations to buy debt and instead of then trying to call in that
debt, they just forget it, absolving the original debtor

[http://rollingjubilee.org/](http://rollingjubilee.org/)

------
jqm
Very interesting article.

I'm sensing a collective consumer opportunity. Form a group, take donations,
buy the bad paper (for pennies on the dollar) and forgive all the debts on it.
No doubt many of the people would be simple deadbeats, but lots of them are
probably just people who ran into problems, and something like this would help
clear up their credit and give them a new start. What a gift! I'd kick in $25
for something like this.

As a side effect, with cleaner credit the debtors would be able to start
racking up more debt again and this would stimulate the economy!

~~~
michaelochurch
_lots of them are probably just people who ran into problems, and something
like this would help clear up their credit and give them a new start._

Unfortunately, once your account is in collections, your credit rating is
damaged and paying the debt off doesn't improve it much. While that's arguably
"fair" (the original creditor still got screwed, losing 60-95 cents on the
dollar) it leaves the debtor with minimal reason to pay the debt, unless
successfully sued, resulting in a judgment. As the OP discusses, most third-
party collectors have lost proof of the debt and won't be able to successfully
sue the debtor. Full recovery of the credit rating _would_ be sufficient
incentive for many people to repay, but that's not an option.

The fact that you can't get your credit rating back (at least, not to what it
was) is one of the problems with the system as it stands currently. If there
was a system whereby people could make the original creditor whole and recover
their credit rating, that'd probably better (if shitty for third-party
collectors).

~~~
jqm
Ya, I'm sure you are correct. It was a bit of a flippant idea. But... it would
still remove _some of the stain from their credit and at least prevent them
being victimized by scummy collectors like those referenced in the article.

------
ahi
"It remained unsaid, of course, that this “paper” had often been purchased for
as little as one penny on the dollar, and there was no mention of the fact
that many of the debts that Wilson specialized in were too old to appear on a
credit report or to be sued for in court. Most negative information disappears
from credit reports after seven years and, depending on state law, debts may
be unrecoverable through a lawsuit after as little as three years."

------
nodetrend
"Most negative information disappears from credit reports after seven years
and, depending on state law, debts may be unrecoverable through a lawsuit
after as little as three years"

So all I have to do to get out of my loans is live off the grid for 7 years? I
wonder if this is the same for student loans.

~~~
UrMomReadsHN
No. Federally subsidized student loans don't have a statute of limitations and
can't be discharged during bankruptcy. And they have that much time to sue
you. So they can and probably will sue you to win a judgment against you
before the statute of limitations. If you don't show up to court to defend
yourself you get a default judgement against you - you automatically lose.

------
kclay
Man, me and the wife are dealing with this right now (didn't read yet). One
company sold to another to keep it going. We got it off but now the next
company is trying to collect so we have to go through it again, but not until
it hits her credit. Just BS if you ask me.

------
uberjon
There is an interesting startup in the space, trying to do things right.
[https://www.trueaccord.com/](https://www.trueaccord.com/)

~~~
osamet67
Thanks for the mention! I'm one of the cofounders. We're already making a huge
difference in debt collection for several leading technology companies. We had
to rethink a lot of the core solutions and technologies for debt collection to
not fall into the same traps.

------
cnp
And to think that I paid all of my debt last year only to be confronted on my
latest credit check with an alert saying that it was all back, and had
quadrupled in value.

------
BallinBige
The CFPB has made the debt buying industry more difficult to operate in. for
better or for worse

------
sybhn
entertaining read! and learn 2 important things: 1) don't ever go to
collection, your personal data will circulate across the globe for many years,
2) look at statute of limitations before taking any collection call seriously.

------
ebiggs
Debtors need to take control. They need to collectively seize the paper at the
giant discount and then dismiss the debt.

How to do such a thing? Seems impossible, but even a 4x or 5x overhead would
be a giant bargain for the debtors next to the sharks, and the sharks wouldn't
be able to compete on those margins.

------
xSwag
1\. Get loan

2\. Don't pay it back

3\. Ask debt collector friend to buy debt

4\. Pay him off

Why would this not work?

~~~
fred_durst
They are sold in parcels. There isn't like a list of debtors in default the
bank maintains that you can go pick from. It's more like here's 1,287 loans
defaulted on, worth a total of $4,342,230 that you can bid on.

------
newaccountfool
Honest question here, where would I purchase some of this paper?

~~~
newaccountfool
If any one wants to know I seem to have found some sort of debt marketplace.

[http://www.debtconnection.com/mastersearch.asp](http://www.debtconnection.com/mastersearch.asp)

------
mrjaeger
This seems like a problem that the bitcoin protocol could help to solve, at
least the tracking part (aka no double selling of debtor lists, knowing who
actually OWNS your debt). To try and retroactively do this is probably suicide
but I could imagine where all new debt sold off is kept track of in a system
like this and people can at least know they are paying to the correct
collector.

------
fred_durst
Father was a personal injury lawyer. Son was a debt collector. Solid family
values over at the Seigels.

~~~
omegaham
Both are perfectly legitimate practices if done correctly. People need a
lawyer to sue if they've been injured by someone's negligence, and companies
need debt collectors if they want to recoup some of their lost costs.

Of course, there are a lot of scumbags in both professions, but I don't see
any reason why there can't be decent people there as well.

