­Nine years ago, someone stole your wallet right out of your coat pocket. You never even saw the guy. He used your credit cards to buy $1,300 worth of shoes. Of course you reported the theft as soon as you found out, and the credit card company declared you not responsible for the debt. Lesson learned, end of story. Right? In fact, you've got your eye on a gorgeous loft-condo. That old theft has come back to haunt you. The collection agency says that, with interest, the debt on that $1,300 now comes to more than $10,000. The agency has no record of your fraud report and considers you responsible for the debt. The agent informs you that if you don't pay up -- and soon -- you could risk legal action. And the debt could jeopardize your loan application for that condo. Surprise: You've just come face to face with zombie debt. Unfortunately, the zombie metaphor is incredibly apt.

On the credit market, debts are sold and resold from agency to agency, so something you may have settled -- even more than once -- can spring back to life, with no record of past payments. Collectors grab for whatever they can get. And the debts are hard to kill. They've been settled in bankruptcy proceedings. They're the result of mistaken identity or identity theft, so they were never your responsibility to begin with. Their statute of limitations has expired. These debts are reanimated by collection agencies hoping to make some extra profits. You know the guy in the B movie who seals his own doom by panicking and getting himself cornered by the relentless zombie army? Zombie debt collectors expect you to be that guy. They make their profits from consumers who don't know their rights, don't know how to protect themselves, and panic. To learn how not to be that guy, and how zombie debt has become such a hot topic, read on.

Let's say that in 1994 Jane, fresh out of college and awash in debt, defaulted on a credit card. In 1996, she entered bankruptcy. Since then, she's painstakingly rebuilt her credit, paying her bills on time and checking her credit report at least once a year. Because more than seven years have elapsed, the old default and the bankruptcy proceedings no longer even appear on her credit reports. The credit card company wrote it off as bad debt -- that is, the company took the debt as a loss. You'd think it might stop there, but you'd be wrong. When a company writes off a debt, it often sells the debt to a collector. What's the point of this transaction? It enables the company selling the debt not to take a total loss. If Jane defaulted on a $100 debt, selling the debt at 12 cents per dollar lets the company turn it into an $88 loss, thereby recovering $12.

But what does the collector have to gain? The collector is betting that it can succeed where the old company failed. Paradoxically, they're more likely to go after Jane because she has rebuilt her credit. They think she's more likely to pay, because she doesn't want to ruin her credit again. And often, they're correct. These companies turn giant profits because their practices often succeed in wringing dollars out of individual consumers. If the collector convinces Jane to pay that $100, the collector has just made $88. Zombie debt has become profitable in part because of two trends that took off in the 1990s: consumer credit and repair phone near me identity theft. Credit companies realized they could make more money in interest payments by extending higher-interest lines of credit to consumers who carried debt from month to month -- the people most likely to default. The buying and selling of debts became big business.

And identity theft created giant backlogs of bad debts for collectors to pursue. Here's a more serious question: Is zombie debt collection even legal? Strictly speaking, yes -- if the collectors don't violate the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. Getting a lecture on morals from a collection agency may seem a bit rich, but don't be too quick to laugh it off. In 2005, the debt collection industry was the single biggest source of consumer complaints to the Federal Trade Commission. What would you do if a debt collector resurrected some old amounts? Find out how to protect yourself on the next page. Who Profits from Zombie Debt? Confused about their rights or simply anxious about obtaining their new loan, many consumers pay old debts to settle the issue quickly. And some people fall victim to a one-two punch of identity theft and their own poor record keeping: They wind up paying debts that weren't even theirs in the first place.

visit south shop
https://maps.app.goo.gl/cAKYMmsGriJV9ERt5