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Construction
Basic Business Practices
Timely articles covering the most pressing issues
facing construction firms in the Midwest
Legal debt collection
tricks
by Steve Austin
If a customer owes your local business money,
it’s hard not to feel angry, like you want to
do anything possible to get your money back. But
the days of going all out to collect on a debt
over.
The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act,
designed to protect consumers from harassment or
intimidation, sets firm limits on what you can do
to collect a debt from a consumer. The federal
debt collections law even prohibits practices
that were once standard, and that you might not
consider harassment at all.
Besides, as a local business, you have an even
more powerful reason to be especially careful
about legal debt collection issues. You have
something much more valuable at stake than a
lawsuit: your business’s reputation in the
community.
Legal debt collection best practices:
There are plenty of articles on the web that
lay out in plain English what the Fair Debt
Collections Practices Act says you can and cannot
do. Just to give you some idea of the law’s
requirements, here are some of the biggest:
- No telling any third party about the debt
(except collection bureaus, collection agencies,
or the debtor’s attorney).
- No calling on the telephone 9 pm - 8 am, or
calling repeatedly in a way that is annoying.
- No postcards or envelopes that mention the
debt.
- No threats to take actions you cannot or
will not really take, such as seizing property,
in the case of an unsecured debt.
- No misrepresenting yourself (e.g., “Hi! This is the
Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes. May I
speak to John?”).
- No paying down the debt with payments the
customer has directed be applied to other debts.
Tips and tricks for legal debt
collections:
With all these limits on what you can do to
collect a debt, what can you do legally?
- Speak with the debtor personally on the
telephone
About the author
Steve Austin
Free debt collection laws information at http://www.debt-collection-laws.com/
cas@collectionagencyservices.net
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