If I have said it once, I have said it a thousand times. There is no reason, no reason what so ever, for people to deal with, trust, or even communicate with a debt collector. This is especially true for relative and loved ones that are grieving. There is really no reason whatsoever for debt collectors to even exist. This does not mean that people should ignore the calls of the actual creditors, but in this day and age of selling bad debt, this does not much exist.
So, what is the problem this time?
The New York Times, reports on one collection company called DCM Services that seeks to collect past due and defaulted debt from THE DEAD.
We use to joke in the old days that death often represented the ultimate discharge of one's debts. This was especially true if the deceased did not have any real assets. No longer. Now you have a collection service that will try to harass your next of kin, such as your children and your widow, and probably at a time when they least need such treatment.
Intervening in a probate matter in which there are assets, other than the home, is one thing, but this is only a small part of what this company, and other collectors, do.
The problem is that the people contacted by DCM and other collectors often have no legal obligation to pay the debt, but they are pressured or convinced in some way to do it.
According to the NYT article, new hires at DCM, for example, train for three weeks in what the company calls “empathic active listening,” which mixes the comforting air of a funeral director with the nonjudgmental tones of a friend to convince people who have no liability to pay the debt. The goal is to play improperly on sympathies and emotions of the person, whether there is an estate of the deceased to pay the debt or not.
I loved this response from the article as to the fact these people do not owe the debt. Scott Weltman of Weltman, Weinberg & Reis, a Cleveland law firm that performs deceased collections, says that if family members ask, “we definitely tell them” they have no legal obligation to pay. “But is it disclosed upfront — ‘Mr. Smith, you definitely don’t owe the money’? It’s not that blunt.”
DCM started as a law firm, which means, I suppose, that it now just a collection agency. What is frightening is that it now employs 180 people, many directly involved in collecting debts from people who do not owe them.
How bad is this practice on collectors. DCM admits in the article that not everyone has the temperament to place such calls and they lose 50% of those it hires to do so in the first 90 days. Of course, you might say as easily that those that quit have a conscience.
And do not think the manipulation stops with the calls. DCM started a Web site called MyWayForward.com to provide the bereaved with information and tools. Obviously to gain the sympathies and trust of families struggling already with the death to pay debts they do not owe.
The collectors for the company are trained in the five stages of grief, which might sound like a good thing, except it is obviously used not to necessarily be of assistance to those grieving, but to solicit the payment of the bills of the dead from those likely not responsible.
I think all bankruptcy attorneys need to be on the lookout for people that have been taken advantage of in this regard.
Expect debt collector behavior to only get worse; little incentive to behave.
Posted by: Jared Hall | March 04, 2009 at 10:23 AM