“Hi, my name is Melissa. This message is for Matthew. It’s very important that you call me at 1-800-555-5555.”
Cryptic message. I immediately recognize the intonation, brevity of message, and urgency as that of a professional collection agent.
I’m not really familiar with these guys because of having been on the receiving end. In fact, I think I’ve been called by one once in my life, regarding a magazine subscription some years back. No, you see, I used to work for a collection agency.
I don’t talk about this experience a lot, really. Mainly because I realize now that I probably wouldn’t take a job with this kind of institution again. It was a “bank” — nominally — that specialized in sub-prime lending for non-mortgage expenses. They made loans for RVs, boats, camp trailers, and those kinds of big-ticket items.
Now, not to say they were evil. They were simply a company that knew the business they were in, and made great money at it. The fact was, they’d get a repossession agent contracted the day a bill was late, and often recover within 3 days of the late-date. Then they’d send a bill to the customer for the repossession after selling the item at auction.
It was a bit of a racket, and cut-throat. They knew who their clientèle was, and the kinds of policies they had to enforce to stay profitable. We had oceans of representatives in cube farms, most of them students at the University of Utah, calling people daily from the moment their bill came due until the check arrived.
But why on earth is such a representative calling me? I racked my brain for what on earth they could want from me. We have no debts, save that on our homes.
Then I thought hard, and realized it could be one of two things:
- A model airplane membership catalog I ordered back in October. As many of you know, this was a tough fall and winter for me. I completely forgot about it, but just got a reminder notice in the mail. I’m doubting this is it, but kind of hoping it is. It’s not a big-ticket item, and I can pay it easily. Regardless, I need to do that tomorrow.
- I just saw a ‘final notice’ warning from Dell regarding a replacement laptop they’d sent me. They’d cross-shipped a laptop due to an episode I’d had with mine… and I hadn’t sent the old one back yet. Holy crap! In the shuffle of all the boxes moving, I had totally spaced it. Sure enough, there’s the Dell box. We’re talking like 3 months since they replaced it for me, though. That’s bad news.
- Some bill I didn’t know about. We don’t have any long-term debt other than our mortgages on our two homes, and those are always current (automatic payment ftw!), so that would mean it was either a utility bill of some sort or a magazine subscription… something like that. One hopes it’s that trivial.
My fear was that it would be #2: the laptop. If they turned it over to collections, yeah, I do have enough money in savings to cover that kind of bill, but “big ouch” for being forgetful.
I lost a night of sleep fretting over this call from a collections agency. I was totally worried that it would be some huge, unknown bill that would blind-side me, ruin my credit report, and disappoint my wife (who has been impressed with the interest I’ve taken in our finances since we started budgeting lately) due to some irresponsibility on my part.
So I called the collection agent back the next day. It turned out the bill was from Comcast. My credit card had apparently expired and they’d been unable to bill me on the auto-pay. They had not attempted to call, send notices regarding the late payment or anything like that… just turned it over to collections when it hit 91 days late.
I paid my twenty-seven bucks. Plus a five-dollar “processing fee” because it went to collections.
I lost a night of sleep over this?
I can do you one better
A few weeks ago I got an envelope in the mail. Inside the envelope was a copy of my mortgage trust (that is, a very important financial document with my signature on it) and a Post-It Note saying “Please call me about this document” and a phone number.
Needless to say, I kinda flipped out. I thought something was wrong with my mortgage, something had gone wrong, who knows. Before I called, however, I did a Google search on the phone number. Lo and behold, I came up with a mortgage company I’d never heard of.
So I called and asked for the name on the Post-It Note. He answered cheerfully.
Me: “I just received a copy of mortgage trust in the mail with a note to call you. Now, before you say anything, are you trying to sell me a new mortgage?”
Him: “Well, some of our customers have managed to get favorable new rates…”
I cut him off and proceeded to tear him a new one about his company’s solicitation methods. He was appropriately chagrined and said he would talk to his bosses about it.
Sheesh.
— Ben
Now that’s interesting…
Now that’s interesting that you looked them up on the ‘net. What I found was that the 800 number they gave me to call did not have any record associated with it. I think this is a big tip-off that you’re dealing with someone who doesn’t want you to know who they are until you talk to them… and for bill collectors, there’s good reason for that. But what category of people other than bill collectors are going to have no reverse record on their 800 number? Most businesses WANT you to know who they are!
Anyway, there was a discrepancy when I looked up my inbound call record. The call came from a local number, not the 800 number Melissa asked me to call. When I did a reverse lookup on THAT number, I found out that it was a collections agency in Logan, UT.
Now, maybe this will just tip off collections agencies that their war-dialer is not set up right. And in this case, knowing the number belonged to a collections agency only confirmed what I thought I already knew, based upon the style used. I do find myself thinking, though: what if someone begins advertising using this method? I mean, what if I’d freaked out all night long about a bill overdue and it turned out that it was a type of sales call?
I’d be really pissed. I can appreciate that.
—
Matthew P. Barnson