Michigan

Collection Agencies - protect yourselves

I never blog about pending litigation but in this case, I am going to make an exception.

I have filed an Fair Debt Collection Practices Act case against a collection agency. Allegedly, that agency called my client and threatened him with a wage garnishment if he did not pay the debt. Since the agency did not have a judgment, its threat of a wage garnishment is a per se violation of the FDCPA.

A few days ago, I received a telephone call from the agency's attorney. He said that the threats that my client allegedly received from the agency, never happened (yeah...right....). And then, he emailed me an audio file of the conversation between our clients. His agency was well protected by having that audio file. I am still waiting to hear back from my client about his response to that audio file, but I am pretty confident that if he does respond, he is not going to have enough good information to convince me to continue representing him. While I am no fan of collection agencies, I tip my hat to this agency because it was smart enough to take precautions to protect itself. I am certain that the money it saved today by staving off my lawsuit was enough to pay for its recording system. Nice job, agency!

Moral of the story to collection agencies - Invest is a decent audio recording system so that when your agents contact debtors, that you can prove that no violation of the FDCPA took place. These audio recording systems are cheap enough that when they save you from one lawsuit, they will have paid for themselves.

Full post as published by Michigan Collection Law Blog on June 19, 2009 (boomark / email).