Kinder, gentler creditors?

[PaKettle]

It seems to me that the creditors I owe have been much less aggressive and nicer to deal with than when I filed Ch 7 back in the early 80's.

Back then I would get calls from creditors who were really threatening and nasty and mean, and would make me feel like scum for not paying them and I'd usually get into shouting matches with them and hang up the phone because they were such jerks.

I also got a lot of threatening letters right away after I stopped paying, back then.

This time, I am surprised at how many of the creditors - now into the 3rd month of no payments - are still sending me "nice" little letters that say things like "Have you forgotten a payment??"

And the calls we get are polite requests that we call them, no threats at all, no dire warnings about out credit being ruined!

It's been very easy to ignore the calls, and the volume of calls isn't as bad as I thought it would be, considering that we owe on about 22 cards, some as high as $18k balances and quite a few around $7-10k.

What really cracks me up are the calls where they play mellow jazz in the background and then just say "Is Pa there??" as if they are a friend trying to reach me. I laugh every time this one calls, and I have no idea who it is, maybe Chase.

I just found this interesting. Did the law make them be kinder? Is this other people's experience as well.

I know part of it is that our's have not gone to collection yet, they are still with the banks.

[lrprn]

Most filers find that when the original creditors shift the debt off to collectors, that's when the calls and letters can get a lot more nasty. Hopefully you'll file before that happens.

[Cassiopeia]

Most filers find that when the original creditors shift the debt off to collectors, that's when the calls and letters can get a lot more nasty. Hopefully you'll file before that happens.

Ditto on that! And I had some real doozies. I've kinda blocked out of my head the names of the companies, they were that bad. But one got my Dell account and one got my Home Depot account. They were SO awful! I think one was "Academy" something or other, in Arizona. That was the Dell account. "Mr. Fuentes" was the guy who used to harrass me. I even saw a lot of complaints about him on some site I googled about nasty creditors.

I'm SO glad those days are OVER!

[danaf]

I wonder if the original creditors ever file for garnishments, like BofA or chase?

[lrprn]

I wonder if the original creditors ever file for garnishments, like BofA or chase?

An original creditor has three choices when you don't pay what you owe - keep the account and eventually go to court to request a garnishment or lien, sell the account off to a third party collector, or write the balance off as a loss.

Due to the sheer volume of debtors in default and the cost of keeping track of them, most of the big guys sell severely deliquent accounts which show no intent to pay to third party collectors. They don't see enough return to chase the money themselves - in fact, they make back most of the dollars they lose on the tax write-off.