My First Mashup

Posts Tagged ‘debt recovery solutions’

The small claims court cannot collect your money for you, but the clerk or small claims adviser can tell you about some ways to do this yourself. Some just hire a debt collection agency.

For example, you may be able to have the defendant’s wages “garnished.” This means that the person’s employer gives you part of the defendant’s wages every pay day until the debt is paid in full with interest. To collect your money this way, you must find out where the person works-, be sure to get the name of the company and its full address, including the county. Then, ask the small claims court clerk for a Writ of Execution and fill it out. When the court issues this writ, the sheriff or marshal will deliver it to the debtor’s employer.

If you know where the defendant banks, the small claims clerk can issue a Writ of Execution that the sheriff or marshal takes to the bank. You need to know the name of the bank, the full branch address and the county. The bank will pay you what is owed, if there is enough money in the account.

A Writ of Execution also can be used to “attach” or take certain kinds of personal property, such as stocks, bonds and the contents of a safe deposit box. After this property is collected, it can be sold in order to pay the money that you are owed.

Not all personal property can be taken. The defendant can file a Claim of Exemption to protect the ” necessities of life,” possibly including a house, furniture, clothes and some wages.

The cost of a Writ of Execution – as well as the amount that the sheriff or marshal charges to deliver the writ – can be added to the amount that the defendant owes you. You also are entitled to interest during the time it takes to collect.

If you do not have the information you need to collect your money, you can make the defendant come to court and answer your questions about wages, the employer’s location, bank account, personal property and real estate. Contact the small claims adviser for information about how to schedule this hearing.

Remember: The judgment is good for 10 years, and you can renew it if you still have not collected the amount you are owed. But, in many cases, the longer you wait, the harder it is to collect the money.

Rapid Recovery Solution is a credit debt collection agency.

Everyone seems to be “going green” right now and collection companies are now following suit. Agencies such as Pacific Northwest Collections are now eliminating paper files and instead are using a piece of software called Document Locater. The shift from paper to paperless has benefited the company in many ways.

Collection agents now can utilize the document locater to obtain files containing debtor information and are able to use this data to answer their queries over the phone in real time. This is helpful for the company because it is more efficient. Before the shift, payers oftentimes needed to wait on the phone for information, or even for a call back from the collections company.

Being able to quickly access information is a useful and effective way to collect, because contacting debtors may prove to be difficult. If an agent does get a payer on the phone, it can prove to be frustrating to wait on questions and often times a debtor may not be able to answer a call back from a collections company.

Financially the new system has turned out to be profitable. With the new green system, hours of work are eliminated. No more typing, filing, or copying is required, leaving agents with more time to contact debtors rather than do clerical work.

The new system also lends to professionalism of the company. It may seem like a collection agency is uninformed when they cannot access information immediately. The more creditable an agency seems, the more likely those in debt are to take the company seriously. Although shifting the information to software and purchasing the software itself may be costly at first, the whole procedure seems to pay for itself. A manager at Pacific Northwest Collections asserts that the company saves $2,000 with the new system.

In a bad economy, collection agencies may struggle with retrieving money from those in debt. Companies who are creative and can think outside of the box may very well turn out to be the most successful.

Mallory McGuinness-Hickey is employed by debt collection agency Rapid Recovery Solution and writes free lance articles on financial news and other subjects.