what happens after stopping credit card payments?

[gogetter76]

Hello,

I foolishly went with a debt settlement company and 3 months later quit them. I found an attornyey and explained things and he said those places are ripoffs. They told me not to make payments to the cc and now i am 3-4 months behind.

Since the BK thing will take 3-4-5 months before it is filed, does this sound ok? I mean how long do credit card companies go before looking to come after you.?

thanks for all your help.

I believe my attorney told me to tell them to call him. Sound about right?

[auttienkassiemo]

Sounds right. I haven't paid my cc since Sept which is when I first seen my attorney. I'm getting ready to file at the end of the month. They have called me to death, but I tell them to call my attorney and ignore what calls I can.

[gogetter76]

Hello,

Thank you!!!!!

[liz417]

I stopped paying my CCs in May of last year, I've directed all calls to my attorney. I hope to be filed by the end of this month or early next month (had to save $$ to pay attorney fees, ch 13).

[debtmonster]

I changed the outgoing message on my answering machine to let them know I am going bankrupt and gave out my attorney's phone # on the message.

HSBC was calling me 4x per day. After I changed the outgoing message, the calls stopped.

They have auto dialers that can distinguish a person vs. an answering machine.

What I did was change my outgoing message to say:
"Hello... <pause> <pause> <pause> Thank you for calling. If you're a bill collector, we are in the process of going bankrupt. Please contact our bankruptcy attorney at xxx-xxx-xxxx... <repeated # again>"

That pause tricked their auto dialers to get a real person on the line so that the real person could take note of the bankruptcy information. Once they got that message, all of HSBC's halted. It was a beautiful thing!

[AngelinaCatHub]

I changed the outgoing message on my answering machine to let them know I am going bankrupt and gave out my attorney's phone # on the message.

HSBC was calling me 4x per day. After I changed the outgoing message, the calls stopped.

They have auto dialers that can distinguish a person vs. an answering machine.

What I did was change my outgoing message to say:
"Hello... <pause> <pause> <pause> Thank you for calling. If you're a bill collector, we are in the process of going bankrupt. Please contact our bankruptcy attorney at xxx-xxx-xxxx... <repeated # again>"

That pause tricked their auto dialers to get a real person on the line so that the real person could take note of the bankruptcy information. Once they got that message, all of HSBC's halted. It was a beautiful thing!

Cool. I will remember that trick. Good idea for a sticky. 'Hub

[AngelinaCat]

I still like the idea that a friend's son had, and actually programmed the phone with, to wit:

"You have reached the number that you have dialed."

And as I said on an earlier post months ago, that was it. After the callers got that, the phone hung up.

[debtmonster]

Or for fun, you can forward your phone to other collection agencies. If everyone did that, they would probably tone down the calling.

[nervousss]

I stopped paying on my credit cards as soon as I decided to file and it was just few months shy of two years before I actually did it! I had about 30k on four separate cards, and beyond the pesky phonecalls, nothing bad happened as a result. I had never been late before, and I called each of the companies to tell them I was filing (not that it helped anything, just so they would have it on record.) It might be because of the fact that none of them were really ridiculously high (relatively) balances, or maybe because they knew it would be a waste of money to sue me as I was going to go down the chapter 7 road. They kept offering me lower and lower settlements... just not low enough. Le sigh.

[willbfree]

what happens after stopping credit card payments?

Or for fun, you can forward your phone to other collection agencies. If everyone did that, they would probably tone down the calling.

I think I just found a way to have a little fun and enjoy this whole process. One creditor has outsourced their collections to a third world country. Most of the time I can barely understand what the rep is saying. Can you imagine the confusion when they dial my home and get another collection agency? Sweet!

debtmonster thank you for the great tip.

[debtmonster]

Or for fun, you can forward your phone to other collection agencies. If everyone did that, they would probably tone down the calling.

I think I just found a way to have a little fun and enjoy this whole process. One creditor has outsourced their collections to a third world country. Most of the time I can barely understand what the rep is saying. Can you imagine the confusion when they dial my home and get another collection agency? Sweet!

debtmonster thank you for the great tip.

SunTrust is calling me up to 4x per day... and they are doing it from India so that the Caller ID shows up as Unknown.

I wish I could get that call forwarding that I had years ago where it would let you forward the call, but it would ring your house first to give you a chance to answer it. If you let it go for more than a few seconds, it would proceed to forward to the number that you forwarded it to.

I would love to make some kind of dialing program that would randomly re-forward the phone every other hour to a new collection agency. For all of us who have built-in modems with our computers and never use them because we're using DSL or a Cable Modem, this would be a perfect opportunity to put that old 56k modem to good use!

[jeb]

They have called me to death, but I tell them to call my attorney and ignore what calls I can.

Interesting - since I gave them my Attorney's name and number I have not received one single call. - jb

[debtmonster]

Interesting - since I gave them my Attorney's name and number I have not received one single call. - jb

I mailed out about 40+ letters so they all have it IN WRITING telling them to contact my attorney regarding any collection on that account. Never heard a peep from any of them after that. I never got calls from many people anyway since I've changed our phone # so many times (not to run away from creditors, but because we changed cell phone carriers many times trying to find one that had a signal available out in the boonies.)