Expert: John Hall - 7/1/2006

Question
I have a student loan that was sent to NCO for collection. I have a co-signer and so the debt is unfortunately both of ours.  When I was contacted by the debt collector they obviously wanted all the money up front.  So I got them into a payment plan after giving a significant amount to start the agreed payment amount.  Now a year later they call saying they want the remaining amount and that the agreed payment I have been making was not enough. That the arrangement was only good for a year (we were never told of any such time limit on the arrangement). They also said that the person who set up the payment agreement is no longer employed there and should not have made the arrangement. Now is this right. Can they demand more money after making an agreement for payment and threaten to pursue further action if another signifcant amount is not received? I have made on time payments for the past year, so can they do anything if I just continue with the previous agreement?  And, how do I get them to send statements showing what has been paid and the remaining balances.

Answer
You are dealing with the most aggressively ignorant and dishonest bunch of bill collectors that I have ever seen in more than 25 years since I started doing this after graduating from law school.  They are not particularly efficient or even good at what they do, they are just obnoxious and dishonest, and very often they do things that do more to expose them and their client company to libility than they do to actually collect money due on accounts.  

So what do you do about this?  

First of all, get NCO out of the picture.  That can be done with a simple letter.  Call me and I can tell you exactly what to say in that letter.  I will not charge you for this and it will gett hem off of your case immediately.

Secondly, don't pay them or anyone else anything furthter - at least not just yet.  Stop any automatic withdrawals that you might have made to pay this collection account.  Chances are that you are going to end up having to ultimately pay this bill, but for the moment, don't pay anything until you can figure out how much you owe, who you are going to be paying, etc.

Last, you may have other alternatives to dealing with this, but I can't say for sure without knowing more specifics about your situation.   Call me if you like.  I will not charge you just to talk ont he telephone.  Call me on my cel phone this weedend if you want to discuss this further and in more detail, and at the very least I can show you how to get NCO packing.    661  492-2673