I have a great question someone asked me this morning. This person is the debtor and did not respond to the creditor when they were trying to collect. The creditor placed the account with an attorney and here is the question the debtor is asking me and my response:
"Dear Michelle,
An attorney contacted me to collect on a year old past due amount. I told them
that I would contact the company, to verify the validity. The attorney informed
me that once a firm turns their receivables over to an attorney, by law, I can not
deal with anyone regarding the matter except the attorney. I live in California.
Sean,
Most companies or creditors will not talk with you once they have placed the account with an agency or an attorney, which is why they placed it with a company to collect for them or the attorney. Normally, if a debtor calls a creditor after they have been contacted by the attorney or an agency the creditor will refer you back to the attorney or agency. Otherwise the agency or attorney cannot do their job effectively.
Business owners and attorney's, agency owners, and anyone who has to deal with bad debt feels that it the bill got to a point that they had to place it with an attorney, they want the attorney to deal with it, the time for them to deal with the debtor has long passed and they have moved on to other things.
Once you received the first letter from the attorney, (and you can still do this if 30 days have not passed since then) you would ask the attorney for the verification of the debt and they will send it to you. This is required by law. If you do not ask for verification from the attorney within 30 days, the law states that the debt is then considered valid since you did not respond, and can be collected upon in any legal manner necessary.
Good luck! Michelle"
This is something I dealt with over and over when I had my own collection agency, when a creditor places an account with an agency or an attorney, and then the debtor calls them, it is very important that the creditor refer the debtor back to the agency or attorney for them to effectively do the job you hired them to do.
In my experience there were creditors who would not refer the debtor back to my agency and would start working with the debtor, WITHOUT notifying me or my agency that they were doing this and we were continuing to try to collect! THEN the creditor would not want to pay the commission to the agency when the debtor paid because they then felt as though "they" collected the money and the agency didn't do anything. Forgetting that the debtor called them BECAUSE we contacted the debtor.
This is very important and now when more and more accounts are being placed with attorneys and agencies, this is VERY important to remember!
Happy collecting!
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