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Jun 29, 2006 11:15 pm US/Eastern
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Debt Collectors Go To Extremes To Get Money
(KDKA)
America runs on credit... you buy it, you charge it.
The trouble comes when you can't pay it back on time.
More and more debt collectors are going to extremes to get you to pay up.
"Mary", who did not want to use her last name, learned that lesson the hard way.
When Mary picked up the phone at work one morning, she got the shock of her life.
"He said you have two hours to get the money you owe us," recalled Mary.
Mary owed money to a debt collection agency for a $400 internet loan she was late in paying.
"I thought I was going to go to jail because he told me if I didn't get it within two hours that I was going to have a criminal record," said Mary.
With millions of Americans up to their necks in debt, experts say collection agents are now becoming more and more abusive.
Some are even terrorizing consumers.
These are actual comments of intimidating calls from collectors obtained by consumer advocates:
"You've got exactly one minute to call me back and tell me what you're going to do."
"You'll do as you're told!"
"Let's get your checkbook out"They curse, use racial slurs and even threaten physical violence.
That's breaking the law to collect money for their clients.
"I've had them call my clients and call them every name in the book, you bitch, you (expletive) whore, you need to get on a boat and 'go back to china' to 'go back to Africa'," said Sonya Smith-Valentine, a consumer law attorney.
In one outrageous example, a collector for a funeral home threatened, to "rip the bodies" of the plaintiff's parents out of the ground, "put them on his lawn..." and chop their heads off.
With new bankruptcy laws making it harder to wipe out credit card bills, experts say collection agencies feel justified doing whatever it takes to collect.
"I've actually threatened people that if they don't pay then I'll serve a goods and lien on Christmas morning," said former debt collector Mike Flannagan.
Flannagan is now exposing industry abuses.
He says he used to take ten percent of the truth and stretch it into 100% of a threat to get you to pay up.
"If I beat you hard enough, long enough, often enough, you'll pay the bill if nothing else to get me to go away," he said.
You should know that debtors do have rights.
Collectors can't garnish your wages.
They can't have you arrested and they rarely sue for the money.
But you can sue them if they contact you at inconvenient times or places when you tell them not to, if they call neighbors or co-workers and if they don't provide you with documentation substantiating the debt.
(© MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)