I’m currently in collections for 3 things.
2012 I couldn’t afford my cell phone bill, so I closed my account (120$ owed) and opened a prepaid with a different company (Who was actually a subsidiary of the last company) I admit to giving up on this one.
I’ve recently started getting calls from really shitty agents about it. I called back on one one day. The guy, dripping condescension, asked how my morning was. He then berated me for being unable to pay because OTHER disabled/low-income people did. Then he said, “Okay, we’ll just keep calling,” and hung up. I blocked the number.
2015 I decided to switch providers, so I requested my (now postpaid since 2014) account be closed so I could do so. I opened my new (prepaid) account with the new provider.
4 months later I’m in collections for this account, because the CSR failed to close my account despite confirming this verbally with me, to my face, in person. 180$ owed.
The real whopper: 2009 I took out a 10 000$ student line of credit with my grandmother as a cosigner. I dutifully paid the interest for years, and stayed in school enough that it never went to paying the principal down. I paid 4400$ in interest until 2016.
Why did I stop? Because yearly, I had to go to the bank and show them my confirmation of enrollment to prevent that principal payment from starting. I went in 2015 and did that. A year later, I’m told that they never received my confirmation of enrollment in 2015. I have been delinquent for a year, because the goddamn agent didn’t enter my confirmation properly. They would not believe I came in, or accept the confirmation after the fact.
A few months ago, they started calling my aunt and uncle, who are currently caring for my grandmother. She is unable to care for herself or understand most of what’s happening around her. My aunt and uncle (Hereby referred to as the Dragons) have never dealt with collections, because they’re sitting on a hoard of gold between their jobs, savings, investments, and my grandmother’s savings. Not bashing them. But nobody on my side of the family likes them because of their attitude towards money.
So, they took advantage of the Dragons’ ignorance re: collections. They called and behaved aggressively. They demanded they pay the entire thing. They threatened to garnish my grandmother’s CPP.
Every time my mother (The person who was telling me, as she cares for my grandmother during the day) told me about this, I would give her information that showed that what these agents were doing was ILLEGAL. In Ontario, a collections agent can lose their license for uttering threats, swearing, etc. They can be reported and will no longer be able to perform their job. It is also illegal to demand payment from a party whose name is NOT on the debt. They shouldn’t have even been talking to the Dragons about it. Yes, my grandmother’s name is on the debt, and the Dragons have power of attorney, but it is still illegal.
The third thing: they issued a notice of garnishment to the bank, who complied. The dragons FREAKED OUT over this. I sent numerous pieces of government information to them. ONLY the Canadian Revenue Agency is allowed to garnish CPP or other pensions. It is COMPLETELY ILLEGAL and there are precedent cases that cover directly-deposited pensions. Just because it’s in the account, doesn’t make it NOT a pension. The bank complying is ALSO illegal, and they can be fined for it. But of course, the Dragons don’t care. They’re being told that it can be garnished, it’s being garnished, and since I’m a stupid disabled young adult who ended up in collections, my information must be wrong.
So, in some twist of logic to save the money, THEY PAID THE DEBT. I am 100% pissed off by this because it’s illegal, it’s meddling, and I specifically told them not to. My plan has always been to pay the debt down when I was employed, or when my grandmother passed away. I know they’ll be taking this out of whatever she leaves to me in her will (A-okay by me), and I also know they’ll pitch a damn fit if I request anything over the amount they paid that my grandmother left me. So now I’m in for a legal battle because of a fucking collections agency.
Just in case anyone wants to hop in and say they’d end up responsible for the debt when my grandmother passed: they wouldn’t. Since I’d still be alive, it is my debt. Neither the Dragons nor the estate would be required to pay. It would NEVER be their problem, if they’d fucking LISTENED to me and not a collections agent who illegally bullied them into paying.
In addition to this, my mother is basically at their mercy. She can’t NOT take care of my grandmother, but they CAN hold this over her and threaten to not pay her for it. She’s doing the job of a personal support worker for a minuscule fraction of the average salary. They’re already complete assholes towards her and my grandmother--like, to the point they endanger my grandmother’s life on the daily. I’ve tried telling my mom that there are programs where my grandmother can receive money to hire a PSW/personal nurses for herself, but because the Dragons are in charge of this, they either ignored or don’t want the information I provided on the program. They tried telling my mother this is her job and she needs to treat it like that, and I immediately snarked, “Okay. Are they insured? Are they claiming taxes? Are they covering your vacation and sick days, since you work full-time? What about overtime?” I’ve told her she should allow my grandmother to be placed in long-term care, but she doesn’t want to because when she was placed initially (About 2 months after she was declared unable to care for herself, and 2 months before her home over 60 years was sold) she was depressed and wanted to go home. She still had her faculties at this point.
So, yeah, I’m not going to be nice to collections agents to act like assholes. The job is parasitic and designed to take advantage of disadvantaged and ignorant people.
