Porter Brown Blog

Archive for the ‘Get Out Of Debt’ Category

When you’re creditors harass you to pay their money, you must make it s point to talk with them to reduce some of your debt amount so that you can pay off your debts fast. But if the debts are sold off to the debt collectors, they usually harass you more to get the debt payments. According to the FDCPA (Fair Debt Collections Practices Act), the Federal Trade Commission has set-up certain rules that the debt collectors or the agencies must abide by. If they don’t follow the rules, they may be tried in a court of law.

The unlawful activities by debt collectors

According to the FDCPA, the debt collectors or the collection agencies are not supposed to follow unlawful activities or unfair practices to collect debts. If they do, report to the FTC or an attorney general in your locality. Check out the unfair practices that the debt collectors usually practice:

1. Conceal the purpose of visit

According to the FDCPA laws, the debt collectors are supposed to disclose their purpose of visit to the debtors. If a debt collector fails to do so and conceals his purpose or lies to the debtor, he is unlawfully trying to collect the debt amount from you. He also has to show a written evidence of his visit disclosing that the debtor can anytime dispute the debt. The collector must show the enforceability and the amount of the debts.

1. Conceals his identity

The debt collector must disclose his identity after he discloses his purpose of visit. Usually debt collectors believe in forcible methods to collect debts and for that reason they conceal their identity and try to visit the debtors as someone else to collect the debts. Even misleading statements about your identity or even about your work function is considered as unlawful and can be easily reported to the FTC or the attorney general.

1. Threatening debtors

If the debt collectors try to threaten debtors to collect debts, this activity must also be reported to the FTC. Many of the debt collectors do use abusive language to collect debts from debtors. They may threaten to call the police and put you under arrest for owing a large amount of money. All these are not at all supported by the act and you must also not suffer these.

1. Call timings

This is also a sort of harassment when the debt collector calls the debtor before 8 am in the morning and after 8 in the evening. There are certain limitations to the call timings by the debt collectors. If debtor is not allowed by his company to meet a collector during office hours, the collector has to abide by the rules and also must not try to call him when the debtor is in his office.

Apart from all these harassments, the collector is also not supposed to call any third party such as your relatives or neighbors. This is also prohibited according to the FDCPA. If you have any doubts regarding the collection practices by the debt collectors, you can check the government websites for more information.

It’s no secret that the British are overwhelmed with debt. From a very early age we are shown poor examples by our parents and other adults around us. Credit card debt is nothing new to us and therefore we accept it as a normal part of life. This kind of negative affirmation is very detrimental to a person’s idea about how money works. The problem of credit card debt is not going away anytime soon so it is important to take steps to reduce the negative impact of this epidemic. Debt consolidation is a great way to help reduce the burden of accumulating debt. What is debt consolidation? Basically, it is a way to transfer high interest debt to a low (or no) interest credit card. This will help eliminate much of the interest charges and will help you to get out of debt much faster. Debt consolidation might seem like a scary thing to do alone. This is not a problem because there are companies that specialize in this service. Companies that help you consolidate debt do so by first getting some information from you. They need to know exactly how much your revenues and expenses are so that they can design the best plan. If you stick to everything they tell you then you should easily be able to get out of debt for good. These services are not free, however. The price that you pay depends on your ability to pay…there is no flat rate. Debt consolidation companies want to help you get out of debt and they get a monthly payment from you as an added incentive. If you pay your other debts on time then that also means you are paying them on time, this motivates them to keep you on track. If you are struggling with high interest rates then you owe it to yourself to try one of these companies…it may just end up changing your life.

Finally, by a thoroughly researching and then comparing several debit consolidation companies, consumers will be able to qualify and determine the one that meet your very specific financial situation, moreover, besides the cheaper interest rate the market is offering. Nevertheless, it is advisable going with a trusted and reliable debt counselor before making any decision, this is the way you will save time because of seasoned advise & money by obtaining better results in a short period of time.