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A friend of mine is in a real financial bind. He is broke and decided to charge up his credit card with all kinds of cash advances and just leave town without a forwarding address. I told him they will find him and go after him with some real aggressive debt collectors. He disagrees, and said what can they really do to him, there is no debtor prisons anymore and eventually they will just write off his debt.
Just how aggressively will the credit card companies go after my friend who will be leaving town with 25K in unpaid debt.
Eventually they write him off as 'bad' in accounting lingo () and they stop going after the person, but it also depends on the amount. I think 25 k could get him in real trouble but after a while they will stop trying. We learned that sometimes the amount in resources it costs to track these people down is not worth the trouble, so they will not bother too much with it. Now if it was a really big amount of money I think they would be really aggresive. Not to say they won't be in this situation, but they could be tracking him down for years.
Credit card companies and collection agencies have teams of folks who's job is to "skip trace" on folks.
At 180 days of non payment the credit card company will charge the account off. During this time the account will probably be in the skip trace team. At charge off they will review the account to see if it will be sent to a collection agency or sent for litigation.
Should your friend apply for any type of credit, even a rental lease they will use this information to try to find him.
Now skip tracers are pretty skilled at tracking down folks. If your friend filled out the reference section of the application the CC company has a couple points of contacts.
So unless your friend lives off cash and gets a job under the table there is a good chance they will find him.
Also to keep in mind is sometimes the CC will sell the debt down the road so this will open up a whole new bunch of folks looking for him. On other threads in this section folks have
posted they they have received calls from collectors for a debt from years ago.
Now some will say as long as he lives "under the radar" until the statue of limitations runs out on the debt he won't have a problem.
I couldn't imagine someone doing that for 4 to 7 years but hey you never know
The credit card company may or may not take action on this. Forget about not being able to find him because your friend just skipped town. This is nonsense. Unless you friend is going to live in the woods and live off the land, he is easily going to be found. Mail, bank(s), job, tax returns, medical information bureau, credit reporting agencies, apartment, mortgage, and so on and so on.
Today, unless your friend in totally "in the wind" -- wherever he lands -- in 15 minutes, we can find him, where he lives, how much he owes on his mortgage, his neighbors, work information, etc.
I just had a client sued, not by the credit card company, but by the collection agency that purchases or was assigned the debt. The balance was $15k and she hadn't paid in about a year and a half. Besides his credit being marked up, and for a long time, there are other ramifications as well.
A friend of mine is in a real financial bind. He is broke and decided to charge up his credit card with all kinds of cash advances and just leave town without a forwarding address. I told him they will find him and go after him with some real aggressive debt collectors. He disagrees, and said what can they really do to him, there is no debtor prisons anymore and eventually they will just write off his debt.
Just how aggressively will the credit card companies go after my friend who will be leaving town with 25K in unpaid debt.
Your friend is a fool. You can't just "leave town" when it comes to a credit card. Every time you get a new job, send in tax forms, the IRS gets a hold of your new address. Your "friend" is going to have that debt on his credit report. Employers and landlords are going to run a credit report before they give him a job or a place to live. He'll never get credit to buy a car or anything else he needs. He should just get a job if he needs money.
He understands that the creditor can find him but asks what are they really going to do about the debt. He says: "They are not going to come to my home and arrest me and put me in jail" "They can call and mail me letters until they are blue in the face"
A friend of mine is in a real financial bind. He is broke and decided to charge up his credit card with all kinds of cash advances and just leave town without a forwarding address. I told him they will find him and go after him with some real aggressive debt collectors. He disagrees, and said what can they really do to him, there is no debtor prisons anymore and eventually they will just write off his debt.
Just how aggressively will the credit card companies go after my friend who will be leaving town with 25K in unpaid debt.
If it was me I'd stop calling him a friend and decide he is a dishonest acquaintance that I do not want to associate with. His plan is a form of theft.
His name, SS number, etc. will not go away and there is a good chance he will be denied credit and hounded by collectors.
People like that cost us all money as the institutions we use must dedicate resources to recover what is stolen.
They might just decide to send Guido and Luigi over to help him out with his decision...
Has he considered bankruptcy? I understand it's become more difficult to file, but he should look into it.
Just leaving town explains, to me, how he ended up in this mess to begin with. Perhaps it's time he grew up and accepted responsibility for himself and his obligations. I had to, why shouldn't he?
If it was me I'd stop calling him a friend and decide he is a dishonest acquaintance that I do not want to associate with. His plan is a form of theft.
His name, SS number, etc. will not go away and there is a good chance he will be denied credit and hounded by collectors.
People like that cost us all money as the institutions we use must dedicate resources to recover what is stolen.
I wouldn't go that far. This fellow is immature, yet, but it's the large credit card companies that are part of the problem. They're the one making the decisions who to loan money too. And thanks in part to all the mortgage companies making risky housing loans, now it's hard for people like me to get a loan to buy a car. Banks are cracking down on all consumer and home lending now.
What can they do to him? Other than make it just about impossible to get any kind of credit at reasonable rates, not much.
However, should he get a regular job, they can garnish his paycheck and he won't get to see much of it.
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) and they stop going after the person, but it also depends on the amount. I think 25 k could get him in real trouble but after a while they will stop trying. We learned that sometimes the amount in resources it costs to track these people down is not worth the trouble, so they will not bother too much with it. Now if it was a really big amount of money I think they would be really aggresive. Not to say they won't be in this situation, but they could be tracking him down for years.
