What Kind Of Person Becomes A Debt Collector

[MSbklawyer]

Where do these people come from? What kind of person decides: OK, I LIKE calling people on the phone and making their lives miserable, so I am going to become a DEBT COLLECTOR!!! I mean, if it paid $100,000 a year, I could understand their motivation, but it doesn't.

Has any child ever sat on his father's knee and said: "Know what I wanna be when I grow up Daddy?!?! A debt collector!!!

I know that they are people too, and that they have their own bills to pay . . .

But Jesus, I was in debt once too and it is SOOO satisfactory to me to discharge their shylock as***.

[2manybills]

I agree with you. That was my very first legal job, I did collections for "Avco Finance". It was sad to see how heartless some of these guys were. You would think it was like a personal vendetta!

[walkthaplank]

But Jesus, I was in debt once too and it is SOOO satisfactory to me to discharge their shylock as***.

I have more respect for Shylocks, they're at least up front about what they do and they follow a code of ethics

[eddiep]

I currently work with a guy that used to be a debt collector. He is still a bigass crybaby know it all.

[lrprn]

What kind of people work for a debt collector? Two kinds - (1) desperate people who need a job - any job - with regular income to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table, and (2) sociopathic people who think crushing others under their verbal heels and making people cry is an incredibly entertaining way to spend their day and make some money to boot.

[Flamingo]

[QUOTE=MSbklawyer;312850]Where do these people come from? What kind of person decides: OK, I LIKE calling people on the phone and making their lives miserable, so I am going to become a DEBT COLLECTOR!!! I mean, if it paid $100,000 a year, I could understand their motivation, but it doesn't.

Has any child ever sat on his father's knee and said: "Know what I wanna be when I grow up Daddy?!?! A debt collector!!!

I know that they are people too, and that they have their own bills to pay . . .

But Jesus, I was in debt once too and it is SOOO satisfactory to me to discharge their shylock as***.[/QUOTE]

As to your last sentence, put yourself at the other end of the spectrum on this matter. Have you ever lent someone maybe a good bit of money and they either didn't or stopped paying you back? Wouldn't you try to collect? What if it was not one but several or maybe more people? Debt collectors are basically like sales people...the more debt they collect the higher their commission...there are a lot of folks out there doing jobs we would never think of doing...not only debt collectors, there are the trash folks at 4:00 a.m. loading your trash while you are still sleeping, the people in the slaughter houses at 3:00 a.m. killing all the animals that provide the nicely displayed and wrapped meats in your grocery store and ensuring you have chicken, fish or beef on your table the next day. They are all jobs performed by folks who need to work and may not be able to get anything else or maybe just enjoy doing that type of work.

When the collectors starting calling us we were never mean to them and they were never mean to us; in fact, several stated how sorry they were to hear of our circumstances since we were long-term great customers for many years prior. In fact, I don't recall one nasty call but more respectful and inquiring. I don't know how I would react or feel if several people borrowed several thousand dollars from me and told me to pound sand...I just look at any situation as a coin having two sides...there is always another way to view any situation.

[Rob517]

[QUOTE=Flamingo;312883]

As to your last sentence, put yourself at the other end of the spectrum on this matter. Have you ever lent someone maybe a good bit of money and they either didn't or stopped paying you back? Wouldn't you try to collect? What if it was not one but several or maybe more people? Debt collectors are basically like sales people...the more debt they collect the higher their commission...there are a lot of folks out there doing jobs we would never think of doing...not only debt collectors, there are the trash folks at 4:00 a.m. loading your trash while you are still sleeping, the people in the slaughter houses at 3:00 a.m. killing all the animals that provide the nicely displayed and wrapped meats in your grocery store and ensuring you have chicken, fish or beef on your table the next day. They are all jobs performed by folks who need to work and may not be able to get anything else or maybe just enjoy doing that type of work.

I agree that if I was personally tied to the money I was collecting I would feel a bit different in their shoes but these guys/gals have no tie to the money they are collecting. If they manage to get someone to pay their debt of say, $1200, its not going in their pocket personally. They will just get their hourly wage etc..for doing their job. Its a job for some and some need any job at this point to survive so I can't fault them for that. I've had some jobs I'd rather not talk about in life to survive myself.

[BigJohn]

Where do these people come from? What kind of person decides: OK, I LIKE calling people on the phone and making their lives miserable, so I am going to become a DEBT COLLECTOR!!! I mean, if it paid $100,000 a year, I could understand their motivation, but it doesn't.

Has any child ever sat on his father's knee and said: "Know what I wanna be when I grow up Daddy?!?! A debt collector!!!

I know that they are people too, and that they have their own bills to pay . . .

But Jesus, I was in debt once too and it is SOOO satisfactory to me to discharge their shylock as***.

I would take a job cleaning toilets, picking up garbage before I would take a job as a debt collector. That is my opinion, but that is how I feel about the people.

[backtoschool]

"Successful" debt collectors (by "successful" I mean aggressive) come from the same ilk of people that sell scam bonds, real estate, and pyramid schemes over the phone. Think of the movie "Glengary Glenross" and the salesmen in that movie are basically what I think of when I think of debt collectors.

Commission based sales types who thrive on "winning" and are not educated enough to get a better sales job.

At least the means ones seem to be that type.

The rest are just people who would take any job to pay their bills.

[JRScott]

From my experience a large number of call centers in the United States are manned in large part by college age individuals who are in college oftentimes, the flexible schedules work with their college schedules.

They are very harsh environments though with high demand on quotas and other things. Turnover is very high I think 10 years ago the average person worked less than 6 months in a call center. I used to work for Marriott Reservations in the late 1990s. Had friends quit there and work for Discover and some other cards. Some of them came back to Marriott due to the environment at the other cards others moved on to new jobs.

[wantout]

So far no calls....

I am polite to everyone, until they are not polite to me, thats when it is game time....

[frogger]

Not all debt collectors are the same. As has been said, many are sympathetic to the problems that everyone is having, and some are just plain jerks.

The attitude of the debt collector is mostly determined by the management.

[kenshirley]

I see things differently myself. True I have interfaced with these people when my father was still alive and a car dealer.
But if they did not exist who would bother to pay their bills?
I can tell you many stories of people that had good credit, wrote checks for down payments on cars that bounced and they were never heard from again.
After some months the dealerships are forced to hire agents to find the cars and get them back.
No, in most cases the law will not help either. Dream on.
So like it or not, what is a business to do. I know many here are callused to these collections agents. I went the rounds with some myself going through the process.
But if they did not exist there would be a lot more thieves out there just scamming business daily, or so I say more than they do now.
I worked for a payday outfit as I stated before. I was only there 3 weeks and I quit as I did not like treating people like I was required to do. But then again I am rather independent in that I am retired and I did not need the job.
So for those of you that think they are the scum of the earth so be it.
Somebody has to serve in the armies of the world, some had to execute prisoners that have to die, and some have to be collections agents. And I was drafted and I can tell you for a fact I did not like the idea of war either but somebody has to serve, it was the law and I did not whimp out and run to Canada either.
Everybody needs a job and I can tell you from personal experiences with them that an experienced repossession agent of boats and cars and such makes a very good living.

[2manybills]

Most of the folks that actually got through to us were pretty okay on the phone. Even while I called to voluntarily surrender my car, man oh man, I thought they were going to be such jerks, but they weren't.

But there are those that treat it like its there money. Years ago (I don't think they do these kind of loans anymore) when they used to do loans where they used your furniture as collateral on the personal loan. That's when I did collection legal work. Some of these guys would file a "conversion" against folks in their BK and actually try to take their furniture. It was terrible! I was young then and it really used to upset me. I'm glad I got out of that part of the legal field! It's like they enjoyed leaving folks with no furniture!

[Flowers]

It's a business.
It's a job.

I'll bet a young person just starting can learn lots about business working in debt collections.