4 ms·

> Another called me work repeatedly and told my boss Even from a purely self serving perspective, why would they do this? If your boss gets mad that you have b

> Another called me work repeatedly and told my boss Even from a purely self serving perspective, why would they do this? If your boss gets mad that you have bad debt and fires you, then it’s now even less likely that you will be paying off the debt, no?

stbenjam 3y ago
My experience with debt collectors is they don’t act rationally and once they’re able to find someone they harass you using any means necessary. The fear of being fired is a good motivator to get people to pay.
- FreshStart 3y ago
  It's basically stalking made a profession.. So it draws a certain crowd.
- PartiallyTyped 3y ago
  I mean they are extorting your livelihood. I think that’s pretty up there in terms of scummy behaviour.
- oceanghost 3y ago
  Precisely. I got a new land-line-number in the early 2000s. One day, I got a collection call for someone with a Mexican surname. I explained I had just gotten the number and I didn't know who that person was. So naturally, they called twice a day for months. I disconnected the line because I was basically paying $20/m for them to harass me. And here's the part I can't explain-- even after being disconnected, the phone would ring but only for the debt collector. EDIT: Another story. Solar Panels in the late early 2010s. The ex-wife's father died years ago, once or twice a week, someone would call her cell phone, ask for her dead father and then try to sell her solar panels. They would not stop. It escalated to calls 6 days a week. I eventually got fed up and told them I'd be happy to come down there with a pistol if they kept calling. I know, not the best choice, but keep in mind this is after 6 months of daily harassment. The guy on the other end of the phone flipped out, told me “I was committing a federal crime, and he was going to report me to the police and to expect them shortly.” Then, as an intimidation tactic, he read my full name and address-- except it was my dead FILs information. I told him to go ahead and put his name on a police report so I knew his name. The calls stopped for one month, and then started again.
iamdbtoo 3y ago
I think part of it is simply competition against other collection efforts. The scariest collector will probably get paid before the others.
jancsika 3y ago
> Even from a purely self serving perspective, why would they do this? Because nearly nothing in the world works on the level of individually self-serving, containerized ideas which have direct one-to-one causes and effects. As an exercise, instead imagine these companies operating on high latency, realtime digital signal graphs running at low sample rates. Say one of those companies' graphs needs to operate on an incoming stream of 10,000 samples. The company obviously desires the highest frequencies to pass into the "payment received" output. So they add an "anger-the-boss" filter into the signal chain. There aren't just direct consequences here-- each change causes a rippling effect for the consequent samples. And that rippling effect clearly changes the behavior of some consequent victims. For example, if victims already heard about these nasty tactics and they want to keep their current job, they might decide to pay if those tactics are still being used. It probably doesn't get the optimal output for the company. But the article talks about how a 1% change in payment rates can be the difference between success and bankruptcy. Like most realtime systems, they don't have the luxury of screwing around with potentially better outcomes if it ever means missing deadlines for paying the company's bills. You'd probably drive yourself crazy thinking of all human affairs as low-latency DSP graphs. But I would propose doing the exercise however long it takes to get rid of the pattern of reflexively approaching any new social puzzle by positing a perfectly self-interested and self-contained individual sample.
cj 3y ago
This may be hard for HN readers to believe given the anti-employer sentiment in many threads here, but... My friend owns 15+ apartment buildings in "not so desirable" neighborhoods. He deals with a lot of tenants who don't pay rent and eventually he has to evict them. 3 months ago he was evicting someone for not paying rent for 12+ months, and a week before the police were going to help get the tenant out of the apartment, his employer stepped in and paid the landlord his back-rent in full. The tenant was employed at a local roofing company. Apparently he was a good roofer, and the owner of the company didn't want to see the worker homeless, so he stepped in and paid a year of the guy's back rent. (And here's the twist... after his employer stepped in and settled his back rent, the tenant still refuses to pay rent, and will be evicted again 6-9 months from now) Maybe debt collectors have had similar luck as the landlord in this story, but that's probably a secondary motivation. Primary motivation for the debt collector is intimidation. Debt collection agencies are ruthless in all ways imaginable.
- flangola7 3y ago
  Landlords that own entire apartment buildings are parasites, so there's not going to be very much sympathy. Most parasite species are mitigated much more directly once detected by a human host.
  - BasedAnon 3y ago
    I'm kind of tired of this thinly-veiled socialist sentiment.
    - aaomidi 3y ago
      Then offer a proper argument that supports making profit off of owning property.
      - BasedAnon 3y ago
        i have the power to do so, and i like to do so, so i will do so. what's your argument for stopping me?
tzs 3y ago
> If your boss gets mad that you have bad debt and fires you, then it’s now even less likely that you will be paying off the debt, no? It might increase the chances that when you get another job you will agree to start making payments on the debt so that they won't get you fired from that job too.

stbenjam 3y ago

My experience with debt collectors is they don’t act rationally and once they’re able to find someone they harass you using any means necessary. The fear of being fired is a good motivator to get people to pay.

FreshStart 3y ago
It's basically stalking made a profession.. So it draws a certain crowd.
PartiallyTyped 3y ago
I mean they are extorting your livelihood. I think that’s pretty up there in terms of scummy behaviour.
oceanghost 3y ago
Precisely. I got a new land-line-number in the early 2000s. One day, I got a collection call for someone with a Mexican surname. I explained I had just gotten the number and I didn't know who that person was. So naturally, they called twice a day for months. I disconnected the line because I was basically paying $20/m for them to harass me. And here's the part I can't explain-- even after being disconnected, the phone would ring but only for the debt collector. EDIT: Another story. Solar Panels in the late early 2010s. The ex-wife's father died years ago, once or twice a week, someone would call her cell phone, ask for her dead father and then try to sell her solar panels. They would not stop. It escalated to calls 6 days a week. I eventually got fed up and told them I'd be happy to come down there with a pistol if they kept calling. I know, not the best choice, but keep in mind this is after 6 months of daily harassment. The guy on the other end of the phone flipped out, told me “I was committing a federal crime, and he was going to report me to the police and to expect them shortly.” Then, as an intimidation tactic, he read my full name and address-- except it was my dead FILs information. I told him to go ahead and put his name on a police report so I knew his name. The calls stopped for one month, and then started again.

iamdbtoo 3y ago

I think part of it is simply competition against other collection efforts. The scariest collector will probably get paid before the others.

jancsika 3y ago

> Even from a purely self serving perspective, why would they do this? Because nearly nothing in the world works on the level of individually self-serving, containerized ideas which have direct one-to-one causes and effects. As an exercise, instead imagine these companies operating on high latency, realtime digital signal graphs running at low sample rates. Say one of those companies' graphs needs to operate on an incoming stream of 10,000 samples. The company obviously desires the highest frequencies to pass into the "payment received" output. So they add an "anger-the-boss" filter into the signal chain. There aren't just direct consequences here-- each change causes a rippling effect for the consequent samples. And that rippling effect clearly changes the behavior of some consequent victims. For example, if victims already heard about these nasty tactics and they want to keep their current job, they might decide to pay if those tactics are still being used. It probably doesn't get the optimal output for the company. But the article talks about how a 1% change in payment rates can be the difference between success and bankruptcy. Like most realtime systems, they don't have the luxury of screwing around with potentially better outcomes if it ever means missing deadlines for paying the company's bills. You'd probably drive yourself crazy thinking of all human affairs as low-latency DSP graphs. But I would propose doing the exercise however long it takes to get rid of the pattern of reflexively approaching any new social puzzle by positing a perfectly self-interested and self-contained individual sample.

cj 3y ago

This may be hard for HN readers to believe given the anti-employer sentiment in many threads here, but... My friend owns 15+ apartment buildings in "not so desirable" neighborhoods. He deals with a lot of tenants who don't pay rent and eventually he has to evict them. 3 months ago he was evicting someone for not paying rent for 12+ months, and a week before the police were going to help get the tenant out of the apartment, his employer stepped in and paid the landlord his back-rent in full. The tenant was employed at a local roofing company. Apparently he was a good roofer, and the owner of the company didn't want to see the worker homeless, so he stepped in and paid a year of the guy's back rent. (And here's the twist... after his employer stepped in and settled his back rent, the tenant still refuses to pay rent, and will be evicted again 6-9 months from now) Maybe debt collectors have had similar luck as the landlord in this story, but that's probably a secondary motivation. Primary motivation for the debt collector is intimidation. Debt collection agencies are ruthless in all ways imaginable.

flangola7 3y ago
Landlords that own entire apartment buildings are parasites, so there's not going to be very much sympathy. Most parasite species are mitigated much more directly once detected by a human host.
- BasedAnon 3y ago
  I'm kind of tired of this thinly-veiled socialist sentiment.
  - aaomidi 3y ago
    Then offer a proper argument that supports making profit off of owning property.
    - BasedAnon 3y ago
      i have the power to do so, and i like to do so, so i will do so. what's your argument for stopping me?

tzs 3y ago

> If your boss gets mad that you have bad debt and fires you, then it’s now even less likely that you will be paying off the debt, no? It might increase the chances that when you get another job you will agree to start making payments on the debt so that they won't get you fired from that job too.