Over 450,000 people in this country are debt collectors. They are normal people. Why avoid a debt collector? Most people that owe a debt want to pay it in a manner they can afford. If you cannot agree on terms or you do not want to pay for any other reason, it does no good to avoid contact. The collector has no idea what your situation is until you tell them and you may be surprised with what they are willing to do to HELP you. If you tell a debt collector you will not or cannot pay, they usually will not want to waste their time calling you and look for other options instead. Debt collectors are normal people despite the inflated reputation the media has given them from abusive practices by a few bad apples. I would hate to judge every athlete by the actions of one cheater, or every teacher by the one who had illegal relations with a student.
You're quite busy here today 'friend'. What you're failing to grasp is the fact that most of the people complaining here are not talking about legitimate debt collectors. At issue here are bogus and 3rd party collectors using illegal and/or unethical means to collect debt. Debt that may not be owed, or debt that is not legitimately being sought by honest collection firms. If a collector is on the up and up, he most likely won't be the subject of discussion here.
I agree with your figures though. You're posting to several numbers here and on more than one you state that there are 450,000 debt collectors in the US. That seems about right. In a country of 300 million people it stands to reason that about 450k of them would lack the integrity to pursue honorable work. The 3rd party debt collection industry in this country is, and has been, corrupt for decades. Laws have been in place for a long time to regulate the business but have been disregarded as a matter of course. The debt collection industry has been protected by powerful interests and lobbyists for so long that they began to feel inviolate. That has changed.
Debt collector shills appear here all the time. One of their favorite lines of BS is that debtors are the people who caused the recent economic problems. A more nauseating line of tripe I cannot imagine. The countries economic woes are directly attributable to the very people who spawned the debt collection industry. Greedy, self-serving financial institutions. After being given what amounted to be a license to steal, they still managed to drive themselves to the brink of collapse. Greed and power was never enough. So they doubled-down and went for more. And lost. Almost taking the country with them and then expecting the taxpayers to bail them out. Bad decisions were made and the foolish took advantage of them. The result? Debt.
This whole situation would have seemed to be a boon to the collection industry. It wasn't. When the money isn't there, no amount of coercion will find it. Combine that with a whole country crying out for protection from immoral creditors and you end up with a rogue industry scrambling for its life.
Consumer protection laws that have been on the books for years are now being used. New laws are coming into effect. People are educating themselves as to their rights and are less and less likely to fall for the old reliable ploys that debt collectors have depended on for decades. Throw in the fact that the people employed in the debt collection industry have never been known for their honesty and what we end up with is a situation that needs to be euthanised.
Debt collection firms are failing. They're being sued every minute of every day. They're outsourcing jobs overseas to get around tougher US laws. They're employing even less scrupulous people and are using methods that are beneath contempt. They're being shut down as fast as they can relocate and are being driven to tactics that are simply criminal.
With luck, the illegitimate debt collectors will be gone soon. That won't help though. The foreign frauds will just take up more of the slack. But hey, let's face it. Those pesky Indians, Pakistanis, Jamaicans etc. are a hoot! We just have to be sure that all of us know about them. That or we have to band together and force Washington to give those Predator drones some new missions!
I have people calling me, for a person with the same name, who used to live in my town, now they google the guy's name and my info comes up, and once you square it with one of these scum bags, they sell it to another, and it just goes on and on. I not only get phone calls for this guy, I also receive his bills in the mail, to include his child support invoices, collection agencies, and even correspondence from the IRS. However, its the phone calls that bother me the most, they call at all hours of the day and night.
I have found the answer to all these annoying calls, it's called the Call Blocker, and it works great. I was looking for the solution to these phone calls, for years, and this is the best solution I have found yet. I bought mine on ebay, and it works like a champ.
Here is a link with the description for the Call Blocker.
http://hqtelecom.com/phone-call-blocker-manual-803/
No, I don't sell them, or have any affiliation with them; I just know this thing works.