How to deal with collectors
Reality and Fiction
If you open forums and blogs of collection companies, you can see tons of material about “reprisals” with debtors. This includes gangster raids, and calls in the middle of the night, and intimidation, moral and sometimes physical pressure. In fact, it is unlikely that things will go beyond phone calls and several face-to-face meetings, without any kind of physical violence.
The fact is that the collection office, no matter how they try to build up menacing and ready for any action of people, is usually very law-abiding. Employees who make phone calls and frighten administrative and sometimes criminal responsibility are just well-trained barkers, nothing more. They earn their living by bringing the debtor into a state of confusion and fright.
If the collectors perform any illegal actions in your direction, you can always defend yourself. Protection can provide you as a personal literacy, so competent lawyer-antikollektor. MirSovetov offers to get acquainted with the most frequent types of intimidation and methods to combat them.
The best defense is attack?
If you do not extinguish your debt to the bank and it transfers your debt to collection offices (you have already negotiated with a bank credit expert and with the lender’s security service), then the action usually takes place along two branches of development:
the bank completely resells your loan agreement to collectors. If this happens, then, most likely, your debt is absolutely “unpromising” for the bank and the collectors also check your hopelessness;
the bank transfers the loan agreement “for rent” for a certain period (usually three months) and if the collectors manage to “clear the debt”, they receive interest from it. Because you should not be surprised that you call different organizations.
Whichever of these cases is yours, you need to know how to deal with collectors. It should be borne in mind that there are a myriad of options for “attacks” among collectors, they undergo whole trainings and training in this regard. But to get acquainted with the main methods of exposure is still necessary.
Collectors – master nicknames. This is their main lever of influence. If you are too tired, then you should change the phone number.
If the bureau employees continue to call work phone numbers, your relatives, tell you what a malicious defaulter and bad person you are, then you should write a statement to the prosecutor’s office for violation of citizens’ personal lives.
Also, if you see that malicious information is being spread about you, then you can tell the bureau employee that you intend to apply to the prosecutor’s office with a claim for the protection of honor, dignity and business reputation. The fact is that as long as there is no court order recognizing you as a debtor, all of the information about you can be regarded as slander.
If the collectors put pressure on you, calling on the phone at night and, moreover, if they “call in” in the middle of the night, then you can report to the police and write a statement about the inviolability of your home and even more of your personal life.
Threats and any attempt to influence you are physically illegal, and you can safely apply to the police under the article “hooliganism.” Even the smallest threats must be immediately suppressed.
If you are threatened by the article “fraud”, and here you have your leverage. The fact is that you cannot be a fraud, if you have paid the bill at least once, it means that initially there was no intention of avoiding debt.
Rules of conversation with the collector
The employee of the collection bureau calling you, as already mentioned, is, first and foremost, the same working person and citizen as you. And no matter how he scares you and is not rude, you must remember the basic rules, the implementation of which is very important for you:
each time you call an employee you require his full name, company name and position held. In case of refusal, stop talking;
to record all calls to the recorder, to warn that the conversation is being recorded, this will greatly cool the caller’s ardor. At the same time, do not forget to record the time of all incoming calls and save the received sms;
when a new collection agency calls you, ask for documents confirming the right of this bureau to work with your debt.
Alternative fighting methods
You can also complain to Rospotrebnadzor. There, your complaint will be accepted and checked by the collection bureau. If it comes to court, the Rospotrebnadzor staff will represent your interests.
In the case of constant threats and interference with privacy, contact the prosecutor’s office. But remember that you should have collected a full range of evidence: sms, conversations. By the way, recordings from a dictaphone should be transferred to a magnetic tape, only in this way they will be considered proof.
