Ask 9 out of 10 adults anywhere in the United States regarding their opinion of the debt collection industry and you will probably hear responses like the following:

1. All bill collectors do is harass people

2. Bill collectors are just rude people

3. All they do is break the law

4. They are a bunch of crooks

As a former Collection Manager I can tell you first hand that violations do happen in the debt collection industry. I can also attest that just like other industries, although there are people that break the laws,  it is the small minority that makes a bad name for that industry.

If everything was as bad as 9 out of 10 people say, this would be equivalent to a debt collection epidemic. Do you want to know what the real problem is? The real problem is the internal secret strategies that collection firms use to get people to pay their debts. Unless you have worked for a debt collection firm, you will be like the 98% of poeple that have no clue as to what these internal strategies are.

All of these psycological strategies I am talking about are legal. Over the years I have taught a few hundred collectors how to legally use words that create fear, shame and guilt to get people to pay their debts. That’s just one example.

What makes matters worse is that when a person gets a collection letter or call from a bill collection, most of them automatically get on the defensive. While on the defensive, they are open to the strategies of the bill collectors. The ironic thing about this is that whether collector is rude or nice a person is open game to be captured by debt collectors strategies.

Let me give you simple example. You get a bill collector on the phone and you make the mistake of asking the collector how much you can settle your account for. Big mistake, big huge. As I am writing this blog, there are people all across the country that are making this mistake.

Once this is done, the bill collector has the freedom to take over the negotiating process. That one statement may have cost that perso hundreds to thousands of dollars. Now this is just one of the multiple mistakes that people make on collection calls every day.

If people understood how the collection process works, the debt collection industry would lose millions of dollars every year. Does this make sense to you? I’d like to read your opinions.