Ask the NEPA Mortgage and Credit Man:
By Kevin Blasi
The telephone is one of the biggest technological developments in the last few centuries. It has made communication between very long distances as easy as pushing some buttons. It has made individual lives much easier and contributed to further discovery and invention.
Even today, the phone is a great convenience in our everyday lives. But the phone hanging on your kitchen wall can very quickly become a source of evil. You may grow to hate your phone. 

Even if your phone becomes your enemy, you still need it for those long talks with your mom or for emergency calls that you can’t afford to miss. That makes it that much more evil, because you can’t get away from the wickedness that your telephone has become.
If you are one of the millions of people who eats dinner with one eye on your food and the other on your phone, then you know what I’m talking about. Creditors can be nasty!
They call and call with no purpose but to harass you into making a payment. Their calls are constant and consistent, like a machine. They seem to call at the most inopportune times. The calls are embarrassing. You may avoid inviting company to your home for fear of having to explain the constantly ringing telephone. It may cause you to start arguing with your spouse. It’s amazing how one financial misstep can impact your life for years.
To understand what to do, it is best to first learn what is actually happening. Apparently, at some time in the past you borrowed money or accepted some sort of service without paying. It may have been a credit card, car loan, student loan, store credit, or even a mortgage. It might be a utility bill or cell phone you did not pay. Maybe it wasn’t yours, but is the mistake of the creditor. In any case, they believe without a doubt that you owe them some amount of money.
The original creditor that extended the credit or service to you is primarily in the business of extending credit or performing that specific service. Let’s say it’s a phone bill to make it easier to explain. The phone company is in the business of providing phone service to its subscribers. That’s what they do on a daily basis. If they think you owe them, they will mail you a bill and hope that you pay it. If you don’t, they will begin “collection efforts.”
Collection efforts may include sending mail asking for payment, and it might also include calling you to ask if you are able to pay. Eventually, when the phone company does not believe they are going to reach you or receive payment, they give up. Even if they have a “collection department,” they don’t usually try very long to collect from you. They would rather let the professionals do that for them. Now, they will take one of two particular actions. 
            
Option One
They contact a professional debt collection company. The phone company agrees to let the collection company try to collect this debt for them. If they are successful, they are rewarded with a large commission. Your phone company is fine with that. They’ve already figured that they are never going to see your money. If this collection company can get any money from you, it’s a win no matter how high the commission is set!

Option Two
They “charge off” the debt on their tax returns as a loss for that year, believing that they will never receive the money you allegedly owe them. Then, they contact a “junk debt buyer.” A junk debt buyer is a collection company that buys debts instead of just collecting them for a commission. 
The junk debt buyer pays a fraction of the original amount to the phone company for your debt. Again, that’s because any money the phone company can get is considered a win. They’ve already charged off your debt with the IRS, helping them get a higher tax return check! 
The phone company is now out of the picture. They don’t care about you or your debt. They won’t bother you. They might even open new service for you!
Why? Because they are in the business of providing phone service, not keeping a list of bad bill-payers. They aren’t going to deny their service to anyone who may just pay them. Your history with them is forgotten. You no longer have to worry about the phone company at all.
You have a whole new set of worries to get ready for: the collection company. I’m lumping the junk debt buyers and the collection companies into the same term of “Collector” because their tactics are all the same.
The Collector then begins aggressive collection techniques to get any money they can from you. This includes mailing your home and any other addresses they can find with your name.
They’ll call your home, your family members and your employer. They’ll tell lies and use humiliation and intimidation as techniques to get the money they feel they are owed.
Much of the list of techniques I’ve just rattled off are illegal, but you wouldn’t know it unless you were familiar with the law that was written to protect your rights: the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.
What you must do before taking any phone calls is to make sure that the debt that they are trying to collect is indeed valid. This could be the step that stops the collectors in their tracks and ends the phone calls for good. 
Now, YOU have some choices. You can pick up the next issue of The Post to see my continuation, you can see more information on our forum at www.ScrantonPost.com, or you can call me at (570) 941-0672. No matter what you decide, I wish you the best of luck.