Patric McKenzie, aka @patio11, is a great writer, and as the article discusses, he has done a lot with helping people manage debt collectors. I once had a ISP send me to collections over a paperwork fuckup (not my fault) when returning a cable modem. Patrick’s writing helped me understand my legal rights, and how to handle it (and how to find additional trustworthy information).<p>This article was really interesting in the context of my $150 cable modem. I wrote the collection agencies a letter with a paper trail (as he suggests) informing them about how to contact me, and my dispute of the debt. The debt magically disappeared. This article really illustrates what happened behind the scenes, which was a pretty cool full circle.<p>As someone with a high credit score, it makes sense why they bothered to contact me. When I wrote the letter, informing them I understood the law and required paper correspondence , I clearly became “not profitable” to them - regardless of the debts legitimacy. Surprisingly powerful insight about how it works behind the scenes. When reading the article, I couldn’t help but think that you could almost intentionally avoid paying debts if you had a lawyer willing to help you fight the system. The economics of the debt collection system seems like it’s not worth fighting anything.
I am in a different western country, where the nuance of laws and systems differs, but the notion of CC debt collection as a miserable, shoddy, shady system holds true.<p>Facing $10K of CC debt following a mental and work breakdown, I subsequently endured years of quasi-legal harassment. Each illegal demand and unfair treatment had to be painstakingly fought against - weeks, months and years sitting at the computer composing lengthy rebuttals, and appeals to government regulators.<p>Only to have the bank blatantly perform the same illegal tactics again-and-again, with virtual impunity - their semi-automated wordsmiths will simply trot out a few pages equating your repayment shortcomings with the fairness of their actions, retract their infringing action, and the music will restart...
I am surprised that un-chased debt can be bought at 5 cents on the dollar, yet then turned into court default judgements and wage garnishments or liens worth 80 cents on the dollar.<p>The dollar amount of the debts increases too, since debt collection firms can attach their costs at highly inflated rates.<p>I would assume that ~75% of debtors will earn some on-the-books wages at some point in the future or own a house. Therefore, this stage of the process seems insanely profitable.
Sorry, I'm very ignorant about the laws around debt collection, but from this article it looks like that if you're sufficiently informed / prepared you can essentially not pay your debt repeatedly because debt collectors will automatically put you in the "not worthy" category. Is that correct? How can the system be so prone to abuse and why don't more people do that?