What’s your point?
Forgive me, folks. I have to take a moment to talk about a recurring situation at the office. As you may know, I am a professional bill collector. I have been for over eight years, and though my reputation may indicate otherwise, most of the time my calls are calm and straight forward. All I care about is getting paid, and whatever reasonable negotiation needs to take place to reach that end, I’m open to. Settlement? Sure. Payments? Ok. I don’t need to beat you up to feel good about myself so I don’t expend the energy trying.
Every so often I send out a series of letters that offer to reduce the amount of the debt by up to 50%. When these letters go out, I immediately start receiving calls from people wanting to discuss it. That’s great, that’s what I want. But I also don’t want to waste my time. I only want calls from people who want to actually find a solution. What I’m finding is a lot of calls similar to the one I just received:
A debtor owing us over $40 thousand dollars called in off the settlement letter. “What’s the balance on this right now?” he asked. “How much is interest? When was the last payment made? Am I still getting late fees?” I answer his questions. “I got this letter about a possible settlement. I want to talk about that.” Sure, I say. Here’s what I can do. Keep in mind I’m not settling at pennies on the dollar here, so a balance like this is still going to have a high settlement. “Any settlement offer would have to be paid in short order, do you think you would be able to put a large sum together quickly?” I ask, as always.
“Well I’m not working right now and don’t have any money so it will probably be a long time before I can do anything.”
What?
Then why the hell are you calling? You ran me through a dozen irrelevant questions, asked about a settlement, negotiated back and forth on amounts, and then you reveal you can’t do it no matter how good the offer is? Were you just bored or something? Is your time worth nothing to you? You would have been better served spending that time sending out resumes.
To put it in perspective;
If you’re in the market for a Hyundai, would you go down to the Jaguar lot and negotiate a price?
If you’re eating off the Dollar Menu, do you sit down at Spago’s and thumb through the menu and ask about the specials?
Do you make your waiter go through the wine presentation while you’re too busy trying to impress your Asian hooker and make him wait forever because you’re too god damned important to pay attention, only to waive him off because you didn’t want wine? (I’m talking to you, you old bald asshole at the Golden Nugget!)
Do you call the phone company just to pass the time?
If you said yes to any of these statements….Well, you existence is just too sad for me to hate on. Good luck, I guess.
