They called some one I know in another city and told them they were trying to collect a bad debt from me. They ask them to give me a phone number to call. It was a credit card debt. I owe no credit card debt, have no credit cards. I'm going to take them to court, I'm going to file a complaint with the bar Associates in every state they are in. They are a bunch of [***],period.
Now I found out they talked to my son-in-law in another city also.. What a bunch of jerks.
MINNEAPOLIS — The banks need another bailout and countless homeowners cannot handle their mortgage payments, but one group is paying its bills: the dead.
Dozens of specially trained agents work on the third floor of DCM Services here, calling up the dear departed’s next of kin and kindly asking if they want to settle the balance on a credit card or bank loan, or perhaps make that final utility bill or cellphone payment.
The people on the other end of the line often have no legal obligation to assume the debt of a spouse, sibling or parent. But they take responsibility for it anyway.
“I am out of work now, to be honest with you, and money is very tight for us,” one man declared on a recent phone call after he was apprised of his late mother-in-law’s $280 credit card bill. He promised to pay $15 a month.
Dead people are the newest frontier in debt collecting, and one of the healthiest parts of the industry. Those who dun the living say that people are so scared and so broke it is difficult to get them to cough up even token payments.
Collecting from the dead, however, is expanding. Improved database technology is making it easier to discover when estates are opened in the country’s 3,000 probate courts, giving collectors an opportunity to file timely claims. But if there is no formal estate and thus nothing to file against, the human touch comes into play.
New hires at DCM 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. The new employees learn to use such anger-deflecting phrases as “If I hear you correctly, you’d like...”
“You get to be the person who cares,” the training manager, Autumn Boomgaarden, told a class of four new hires.
For some relatives, paying is pragmatic. The law varies from state to state, but generally survivors are not required to pay a dead relative’s bills from their own assets. In theory, however, collection agencies could go after any property inherited from the deceased.
But sentiment also plays a large role, the agencies say. Some relatives are loyal to the credit card or bank in question. Some feel a strong sense of morality, that all debts should be paid. Most of all, people feel they are honoring the wishes of their loved ones.
“In times of illness and death, the hierarchy of debts is adjusted,” said Michael Ginsberg of Kaulkin Ginsberg, a consulting company to the debt collection industry. “We do our best to make sure our doctor is paid, because we might need him again. And we want the dead to rest easy, knowing their obligations are taken care of.”
Finally, of course, some of those who pay a dead relative’s debts are unaware they may have no legal obligation.
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 Services, which began in 1999 as a law firm, recently acquired clients in banking, automobile finance, retailing, telecommunications and health care; DCM says its contracts preclude it from naming them.
The companies “want to protect their brand,” said DCM’s chief executive, Steven Farsht. Despite the delicacy of such collections, he says his 180-employee firm is providing a service to the economy. “The financial services industry is under a tremendous amount of pressure, and every dollar we collect improves their profitability,” he said.
To listen to even a small sample of DCM’s calls — executives played tapes of 10 of them for a reporter, electronically edited to remove all names — is to reveal the wages of misery, right down to the penny.
A man has left credit card debt of $26,693.77, the legacy of a battle with cancer. A widow says her husband “had no money. He pretty much just had debt.” Asked about an outstanding account of $1,084.86, a woman says the deceased had no property beyond “some tools in the garage” and an 18-year-old Dodge.
Not everyone has the temperament to make such calls. About half of DCM’s hires do not make it past the first 90 days. For those who survive, many tools help them deal with stress: yoga classes and foosball tables, a rotating assortment of free snacks as well as full-scale lunches twice a month. A masseuse comes in regularly to work on their heads and necks.
Brenda Edwards, one of DCM’s top collectors, spoke with a woman in New Jersey about her mother’s $544.96 credit card bill.
“She had no will, no finances, nothing,” the daughter said. “Nothing went to probate.” The $200 in the checking account was used for funeral expenses. But the woman also said the family “filed a form with the county,” indicating that perhaps there was a legal estate after all.
“Is anyone in the family in a position to pay this?” Ms. Edwards asked, adding: “I’m not telling you it needs to be paid at all.”
The woman reached a decision. “I will talk to my brothers and sisters and we will pay this,” she said.
Ms. Edwards has a girlish voice that sounds younger than her 29 years. “If you plant a seed and leave on a good note, they’ll call back and pay it,” she said.
DCM started a Web site called MyWayForward.com to provide the bereaved with information, tools and, some day, products. “We will never sell death. But it’s O.K. to provide things that could be helpful to the survivor,” Mr. Farsht said. Death will be the end of one customer relationship but the beginning of another.
Some survivors are surprised, and a few are shocked, that they are hearing from a collector.
Eric Frenchman, an online consultant, said a DCM agent inquired about his late father’s $50 Discover card balance before the bill was even due. Since Mr. Frenchman had been planning to pay it anyway, he emerged from the experience vowing never to get a Discover card himself.
The major deceased-debt firms say such experiences are rare. Adam Cohen, chief executive of Phillips & Cohen Associates of Westampton, N.J., said his team of 300 collectors “are all trained in the five stages of grief.”
If a relative is more focused on denial or anger instead of, say, bargaining, the collector offers to transfer him to the human resources company Ceridian LifeWorks, where “master’s level grief counselors” are standing by. After a week, the relative is contacted again.
DCM executives say some of the survivors not only gladly pay but write appreciative notes. They offered up a stack, with the names deleted, as proof.
One widow wrote that a collector “was so nice to me, even when I could only pay $5 a month a few times.” Saying that money was “so tight” after her husband died, she added: “It was very hard for me, and to get a job at my age. Thank you.”
SCHUMER CALLS FOR FEDERAL INVESTIGATION INTO DEBT COLLECTORS THAT SHAKE DOWN RELATIVES OF DECEASED DEBTORS
Senator 'Dismayed' By Deceitful Practice That Preys On Relatives Who Have No Legal Obligation To Pay Their Deceased Loved Ones' Bills
Schumer Urged Crackdown By Federal Authorities In One-on-One Meeting With New FTC Chairman; In Letter Sent Wednesday, Requests List of Credit Card Companies That Hire Private Collectors To Engage In This Practice
WASHINGTON, DC— Following a meeting with the new chairman of the Federal Trade Commission yesterday, U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) on Wednesday urged a federal investigation into debt collection companies that pursue payments from relatives of deceased debtors, saying the practice appears to violate existing law.
"These companies call surviving relatives, often shortly after the death of a loved one, to coax or cajole them into making payments on the deceased relative’s credit card. To say the least, this practice is distasteful and unethical. Moreover, this practice may very well violate the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act," Schumer wrote in a letter sent Wednesday to FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz.
In the letter, Schumer requested an inventory of how many debt collection agencies engage in the practice, and which credit card issuers contract with debt collectors for this purpose. He asked for an explanation as to why the practice isn't illegal under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, since that law prevents the collection companies from contacting anyone other than the debtor about outstanding bills. Finally, Schumer inquired whether, short of declaring the practice illegal, debt collectors could at least be required to notify the relatives they contact that they have no legal obligation to pay off the debt.
Schumer's action came on the heels of a high-profile published report last week exposing this practice, which is deceitful since relatives of deceased debtors are not required by law to assume their loved ones' debts. But debt collection agencies conveniently omit this information as they seek to coax the relatives into making payments on the outstanding bills.
A copy of Schumer's letter appears below.
March 11, 2009
Chairman Jon Leibowitz
Federal Trade Commission
600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20580
Dear Chairman Leibowitz:
I am dismayed to learn from recent media reports that some debt collection companies have made it a practice to attempt to collect unpaid credit card balances – and perhaps other types of unsecured debts – from the families of the deceased. According to numerous reports, these companies call surviving relatives, often shortly after the death of a loved one, to coax or cajole them into making payments on the deceased relative’s credit card. To say the least, this practice is distasteful and unethical. Moreover, this practice may very well violate the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. I am hereby requesting that the Federal Trade Commission investigate whether debt collection companies are violating the law when they engage in this practice, and exactly what information they are conveying to surviving relatives who are under no obligation to pay off their loved ones’ credit cards.
The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, among its many prohibitions, prevents debt collectors from contacting anyone other than the credit card holder without the prior consent of the holder. Specifically, the Act provides that “a debt collector may not communicate, in connection with the collection of any debt, with any person other than the consumer, his attorney, a consumer reporting agency if otherwise permitted by law, the creditor, the attorney of the creditor, or the attorney of the debt collector.” “Consumer” is defined in the Act as a “natural person” who owes a debt. If this language does not apply to a situation in which the consumer is deceased, I would like to know the basis for such an opinion.
I find it shocking that a debt collection company would determine that it is worth causing profound anguish and embarrassment in order to collect debts that are sometimes as low as $50, or which result in a payment of $15 a month from a widow or widower who is struggling to make ends meet. If a debt is large enough to be worth collecting, there are legal ways to obtain payment. First, if a surviving family member has also signed for the card, that family member will be obligated to pay the debt. Second, an unsecured creditor such as a credit card issuer can obtain payment from the estate of the deceased through a routine probate proceeding, after the holders of secured debt – such as mortgagors– are paid. This practice of harassing living family members for upfront payments results in putting credit card issuers in the front of the line to get money from an estate, rather than after those who hold secured debt.
Given the current economic situation, in which millions of honest, hard-working Americans are struggling to meet their obligations, this practice is opportunistic and destructive.
In addition to opening an investigation into these practices, I would like the answers to the following questions:
· Which debt collection companies (“collectors”) are engaging in the practice of collecting credit card debt from widows, widowers, children, and other relatives of the deceased?
· Which credit card issuers are hiring these collectors, or selling their debts to these collectors? Have the issuers endorsed this practice, either by turning a blind eye toward it or by specifically encouraging it?
· Does the practice of trying to collect unsecured debts from the living relatives of debtors who have passed on violate the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act’s prohibition on communicating with third parties? If not, why not? What measures could be taken to make sure that these practices are stopped?
· If these practices are currently legal, are these collectors uniformly making sure that they tell living relatives that they have no legal obligation to pay the debt? Further, are the collectors informing the living relatives of the statute of limitations for collecting these debts? Are the collectors informing the living relatives that any credit card debt would be paid from the estate only after other secured debts, such as mortgage and car payments, are paid?
Given that the FTC receives more complaints about debt collection companies than any other American business, I hope and expect that you will be thorough in your investigation of this matter.
Caller knew my cell number, home number and dead father's home number. Called all 3 and refused to leave a voice mail.
From the patterns of other complaints obviously these guys have a way to prey on relatives of the recently deceased but are not legit because anyone who is would politely ask to speak to the attorney in charge of their estate, not curse you out at 5 am.
They call this morning from 302-355-3500 and left a message. What a suprise to me to find out that I am dead. They are trying to collect from my estate. Well good luck on that, if I am dead I am not paying.