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Creditor Harassment in Alabama to increase due to Debt Buyers filing more lawsuits in Birmingham and elsewhere
Posted by: Matthew Dunaway
August 02, 2007

The debt buying industry has grown dramatically over the last few years, to become a multi-billion dollar industry and the new "darling" of Wall Street and private equity firms. Debt Buyers are companies that buy defaulted debt from original creditors or other debt buyers. The original creditor will charge off a debt (usually after 180 days of non-payment) and sell the account to a debt buyer; usually for pennies on the dollar. The debt buyer will then legally own the debt and begin collection efforts.

Although this has been going on for years, few consumers understand how this works. Upon receiving a collection notice from a debt buyer, the consumer will thrown the notice away, not realizing that the debt buyer purchased the debt from the original creditor. Often these attempts to collect the debt will happen years after the original debt was charged-off.

Collection efforts will include phone calls to home, work, family members and neighbors, an endless supply of collection letters, negative reporting on credit reports, and in some cases, lawsuits filed by the debt buyer against the consumer.

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