As someone that has been involved on the IT side of the collections industry for about 12 years now, I feel like I need to point out some common misconceptions about the industry that this article highlights.

One is there is a difference between debt buyers and collection companies. Some agencies do buy the debt (usually as a different division or a different corporate entity), but when you talk about collection agencies, they are usually working on a contingency to collect the debt. There are also 2 different ways that agencies work for debt owners, which are 1st party and 3rd party. 1st party they are calling as a contractor for the debt owner using the debt owner’s name, they usually have direct access to the clients systems . 3rd party they are calling you to collect on a debt and using their agency name and working entirely off their own systems.

3rd party collection companies are extremely easy to sue. Most of them would do criminal background checks and would not hire someone with a record (other than maybe DUI/DWI). They also fall under the FDCPA, which as a poster above mentioned, makes they incredibly easy to sue. The FDCPA is so out of date and open to interpretation that even if you do everything right, you still get sued. It is very similar to patent trolling in the software industry. The cost of litigation is so much more than the cost of a settlement that pretty much every agency is just going to settle.

Now what the article does talk about with how the paper that is being sold to debt buyers is unfortunately true and the data from some of these is awful (I have seen some, but the companies I have worked for usually don’t work this kind of stuff). And the article is also correct that most of they will not have itemized statements that prove that you owe the debt. Most of the debt that is being talked about in the article would be out of the statute of limitations to sue (this varies state to state usually 2-6 years), and would also be considered to not be eligible to be reported to the credit bureaus (being over 7 years old). At that point there is legally nothing a collection company can do to you, except keep trying to contact you, and once you request them to cease contact they legally have to (if you do this verbal it is also best to follow up in writing by certified mail, it will make you lawsuit stronger).

I will say that there are good people and good companies working in this space, but you never hear about them. The collections side of the industry does provide a valuable function and really does not need more regulation. They already have different laws in almost every state, the FDCPA (which does need to be updated for technology, its ancient at this point) which is enforced by the FTC, and now the industry is also dealing with the CFPB.

What I do agree with is that there needs to be more regulation to debt buying. There need to be better controls in place to protect private data. Excel files (that often are mangled because some idiot didn’t import them right from a csv export) are passed around way too much. While the good agencies and debt buyers do take data security seriously, most of the smaller ones don’t. I can say that as someone that has worked in this industry, that I would not want my person data treated the way some of the companies I have worked with do (Not the collection agency itself, because I have usually been in charge of that side of the system, and I have always done my best to protect that data like it was my own).