

Confessions of a Debt Collector - gscott
http://dailycaller.com/2010/03/15/debtors-prism-confessions-of-a-collector/

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mediaman
There's a lot of money in businesses in which you're helping companies "find
money". In this case, it's recovering at least something from a bad debt. In
others, it could be finding buyers for scrap product or other material that's
usually just thrown away. The sellers aren't price sensitive, and unless
there's a very competitive secondary market, you can get away with high
margins.

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Estragon
Disappointing. Didn't live up to its promises of exposing aspects of the
business which could only be gleaned by "going into the belly of the beast."
The author might not be granted much literary license on most projects, but he
sure took it here. (As much in the flowery prose as in the broken promise.)

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roc
I'm not sure where he was going with that reference to strip clubs and plasma
clinics at the end.

Did I miss something?

~~~
angelbob
I think he alludes to them being unsavory things that still won't go away
because there's a demand.

That's what I got out of that sentence.

I'm not quite sure why a plasma clinic would be unsavory. Maybe he's thinking
of the (now illegal?) practice of paying donors?

~~~
akgerber
It's more that these are ways to make money fast if you're desperate. Plasma
donation is usually something people do to get paid, which is why plasma
centers are usually in poor neighborhoods.

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Mz
The topic reminds me of a family anecdote:

When I was a little girl, my dad worked for a time for a small company. He
apparently talked the owner into letting him take over the dead accounts as
part of his duties on the condition that he get a cut. The owner expected them
to be uncollectable, so he figured there was nothing to lose.

My dad would go personally see these people, learn where they lived, learn
what day of the month they got their check (often, a welfare check). On that
day, he would show up with enough money to cash their check and take out a
small payment on the debt they owed. (He swore that if you went even one day
later, you weren't going to get a dime.) He was very friendly about it and
offered to cash it for their "convenience". He made it an offer they could not
refuse.

My dad supposedly collected on upwards of 90% of what the business was owed by
these dead accounts, taking his cut, of course.

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sliverstorm
I never have really understood why debtors often seem to have no legal
obligation to pay their debts. I mean, a system where all the lender can do is
call and say 'please pay us'? That makes no sense.

~~~
tptacek
Because the punitive response to default makes even less sense. It doesn't
extract much money (most structured BK's fail). It retards entrepreneurship
(most new companies fail). It locks debtors into unproductive careers or
businesses, which is a net loss for the economy. And, it actually encourages
irresponsible lending (greater disincentives to default imply more incentives
to lend).

What makes no sense at all is the system of incentives that, over the last
10-15 years, motivated financial institutions to go out of their way to extend
credit to people with no discernable way to pay it off. Those incentives had
_almost nothing_ to do with consumer responsibility. They appear instead to
have been a byproduct of the deliberate mispricing of debt.

~~~
rdtsc
> Because the punitive response to default makes even less sense.

I always thought that banks don't care for punishing people per-se, as
morality it not their business. It seems they just have an excuse to create
some bogus losses to offset their gains on paper? Does that makes sense? In
other words, they know that some of these debtors will never pay back so they
start charging a high (say 35%) interest. All that accumulated "loss" can be
written off against their gains for tax purposes.

Does that make any sense or am I completely wrong?

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erlanger

      > The syntactical errors in the ad suggested that it was written by a
      > self-educated man,
    

Do I need to say anything?

    
    
      > This wasn’t the way women of my acquaintance talked ... But those women had
      > all been to good schools
    

Hopefully I don't.

