How Will Debtors be Phoned?

After reading Article #1 titled "Is Your Business Owed Money?" in my series of "Recover Your Business Profits" blog posts, your business should have concluded to use a third party which is a profit recovery company to free up those profits which are tied up in late past due accounts receivable.

Another critical question that must be asked before selecting which profit recovery company to use is, "Will the phone calls made to my debtors be compliant with the law and handled professionally?"

Everyone has seen the TV reports and newspaper articles about collection thugs harassing people who owe money. Tactics have been documented and shown where collection agencies call the debtor’s employer and bad-mouth the person to ruin their reputation, call at 5 AM in the morning or 12 AM at night to wake up the debtor, and even threaten to physically harm the debtor just to name a few.

These are the exact tasteless tactics that drove enactment of the federal FDCPA law and various other state laws to protect the rights of the debtors and rightfully so!

As discussed Article #4 “Make Sure Your Collection Agency Isolates You from Liabilities Due to Their Errors”, the creditor is liable for the actions of any third party it hires to collect or recovery money for them. Even if the third party has a hold harmless contractual clause legally isolating the creditor from liability, poor third party practices shed a very bad image on the creditor’s business and this negative publicity can affect sales! So there are many reasons you as the creditor want to avoid inappropriate collection practices from your hired third party at all costs.

In studying the debtor complaints filed regularly in the judicial system, it is clear that they almost all happen in what the industry calls the second phase of collections or verbal demands better know as the phone calling phase. The complaints do not originate in the first phase of written demands nor do they happen in the third phase of litigation.

So you want to insure you understand how your collection or recovery company handles phone calls to debtors. Carefully and specifically make sure that they abide by all laws in the phone-calling phase.

This is the minimum set of criteria you should insist on from your collection or recovery company:

     1) third party call center employees are college educated and with more than just a high school degree

     2) third party call center employees are well trained on the federal, state, and local laws

     3) the third party has corporate phone call monitoring (ie. recording) so management can audit call center employees to confirm they are abiding by the law

     4) the third party has corporate fake debtors in the system, unbeknownst to the call center employees, who confirm that correct practices are occurring per the law

In summary, you want a reputable and professional call center process that makes every attempt to conform to the letter of the law!


To inquire about how you can work with a profit recovery company that has an average 56% recovery rate in 40 days for accounts turned over before they exceed 90 days late and where the call center employees are college educated professionals and monitored to insure they comply with the law

call us at:

818-710-0244


Series: "Recover Your Business Profits"
Article: #8 "How Will Debtors be Phoned?"