so with all of the problems that have been happening the past few months I have been behind in my credit card payments....really far behind, and most people in my position would have declared bankrupcty by now...but I refuse. I want to pay my bills, I just can't at the moment, not until I can get a steady second income coming into the house. This entails me getting a second job, which I am working on.
With all of my creditors save one, I have been dealing with their hardship departments and they have been fairly nice and reasonable to work with. The exception is First Financial Bank.
Never deal with First Financial Bank.
Most of the time the first person you talk to is rather nice. You can explain the problem to them, they will look through your account history----because they note down everything you say to them and your history of conversation with them is there-----DON'T LET A COLLECTIONS AGENCY TELL YOU OTHERWISE! I know, because I used to work for one. So after you build up a good relationship with the first person, talk about options, and set up arrangements then they have to send you over to the "verifier".
The "verifer" job is to be an ass.
This is the person who wants you to explain everything that you talked to the first person for 20 minutes about again....and verify what you have said to the last 5000 other people. They always refuse to read through your history, and I sincerely believe that they are told to beat the person into the ground. I hang up on most of the verifers after I tell them that they are incredibly rude and have ruined any positive feelings that I had with working with their company. Maybe they are told to be rude, or they are just so hardened from doing collection work that they have forgotten how to be human.
Anyway, the cell rings today and it says "private call"....I have been answering those because when Mr.3 calls me that is what it shows up as. Unfortuately, it wasn't Mr.3....but it was First Financial Bank and I am almost positive that I have spoken to the same person before as a verifer. He had a distinctive voice. In less that 30 seconds he told me that my "behavior was unacceptable" and that "all of my income should be sent to them to pay my bill" and there was some other things that he added.....either way I told him that he had been incredibly rude and that I wasn't going to deal with him. I hung up at him as he was starting to yell at me....and I mean "yell" at me. There was no reason for him to yell at me, in fact I had hardly said anything to him besides, yes that is who I am and that I have no new information for him as I was in the process of getting a second job.
The thing about collections is that you need to collect money. I understand that, and I realize that I am a horrible debtor who hasn't made payments in a while. (Well I did make a payment to everyone last month, but was told that since it wasn't the minimum payment that it was worthless-yeah.....that felt great let me tell you.) However you can only really be "mean" in collections in the earlier stages, not the later stages that I am in. The later a person is in the collections process the higher the likelihood that they will declare bankruptcy and the company would have to write off all of that debt. When I worked for Discover card in 1997 they wrote off 2 billion dollars a year in debt from people declaring bankruptcy.
2 billion a year.
In the later collection stages it isn't a case where someone forgot a payment, there is a serious problem....you want to work with them so that you actually do get paid.
Every other company that I have credit with has been willing to work with me, except First Financial Bank, who makes me want to declare bankruptcy just to spite them.
And I want to spite them so badly.
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