You are well aware that collecting past due bills isn’t easy. Here are a few ideas that will make it easier. L Capone once stated that you will get a better response with a gun and a nice word than with a nice word alone. While the temptation is certainly there to force a debtor […]

Is it fair that medical debt reduce a consumer’s FICO Score? That is the question being batted around in the Consumer Protection and Credit arena. The goal is to protect consumers from unfair credit damage but the implications to anybody who uses a FICO Score to evaluate credit are significant. Medical debt is exactly the […]

The FTC recently published a blog post entitled “Think Your Company’s Not Covered by the FDCPA? You May Want to Think Again” Before I go into the details, I need to mention that this shouldn’t be much of a problem for most companies. The rules basically forbid your debt collectors from being Jerks. They would […]

If many of your Customers are Small Businesses you will need to protect yourself in different ways than you would for larger companies. In a nutshell, this is because small businesses are usually defined by a single individual or a small group of people. The dynamics of financial success are much different than for large […]

Courts are getting testy about Security Deposits.They want them to be ‘fair’ and protected from Landlords who would use them beyond the scope of their intended purpose.The changes are not difficult to live with but they may become expensive to ignore. Many Landlords already abide by the new rules which pop up state by state […]

That is the number one rule when communicating. As a Debt Collection Agency we are keenly aware of the pitfalls of verbal commitments. I would like to share some of the problems involved and their simple solutions. The first rule of debt collection communication is that there is no truth, only perspective. Science has studied […]

The Sales Rep walks into your Office with a big smile and a brand new application. At this point everybody is happy. That will not last, however, if the information provided does not clearly define the new Client. We have a tendency to hear what we want to hear and see what we want to […]

In some States, Eviction Courts also deal with Money Judgments relating to the final charges to the Tenant. Others, such as New Jersey, only concern themselves with possession of the Apartment unit. In these cases, money is usually part of the process because failure to pay rent is the most common cause of an Eviction. […]

Auto-Dialers have become a major tool in the Debt Collection industry for one reason. They dramatically reduce the amount of human time invested in collecting a dollar. Robots don’t get paid and have all the energy required to out call dozens of humans. While debtor response to auto-dialer calls is much lower than their response […]

There are three reports run by most people who need to screen a prospective tenant or employee. While there are a large number of additional reports, these three are extremely important in the decision to accept or reject so, with apologies to those who run additional reports, I will limit my discussion to the big […]