[Willie Green]

My Bad. Title should be: As bills pile up, jobless wear down; Coping with collectors can crush spirits

[Admin Moderator]

Fixed.

[Chancellor Palpatine]

BTTT

[Destructor]

I wonder what percentage of these cases are people that refuse to take work that doesn't meet their expectations of pay, or work that they consider to be beneath them? It's hard for me to feel sorry for those individuals.

[Question_Assumptions]

There are non-profit credit counselling services all over the place to help people deal with creditors for a small fee. They can remove interest and cut payments. The key is to go before things get too bad. Some people wait too long.

[Sam's Army]

"After McGlinchey lost his job, he could not keep up the payments on his college-age daughter's credit card."

Hate to call him out on this one, but why isn't the daughter making some payments on her own credit-card? I understand that a 70k job may not be around the corner for this guy, but surely the daughter could be of a little less burden here.

[Just another Joe]

Collectors reason that a stressed-out debtor will be more likely to pay up just to end the aggravation.

A stressed-out debtor may just go for his gun also.
Push too far and even an ant will push back.

[NYDave]

Abusive practices in debt collection are illegal. Anyone experiencing a problem with collectors, aside from persistent and polite phone calls, should contact their state's better business bureau. Log on the the internet and do a search on debt collection. Somewhere out there has to be a statement of consumer rights.