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Debt Collection Course For Beginners: A Lesson In Skip Tracing

by MalloryMegan

Welcome to debt collection 101. Here you will learn the ins and outs of debt collectors, otherwise known as account or bill collectors, or collection agents. The main job of a debt collector is to locate a debtor (a person who owes money to a creditor) and to try to collect payment on accounts that have gone delinquent. There are two kinds of debt collectors. The first kind is the most common. These are called third party collectors, and these people work for a third party collection agency. What happens in these situations is that a creditor will have a delinquent account that it will hire out to a third party collection agency, who will then tell the third party debt collector to collect on the creditor's behalf.

The second kind of bill collectors work directly for the original creditors and are called in house collectors. In house collectors are not bound by many of the rules of the FDCPA and the creditors that they work for are usually companies founded on finance, like mortgage and credit card companies, healthcare providers, or utility companies.

Regardless of who they work for, debt collectors all have similar goals: to find the businesses in debt or debtors, and to tell them that they are late on payment. Generally this will be done over a phone conversation, but sometimes debt collectors send letters.

At times debtors are not so easy to trace. At times they could move without leaving a forwarding address, or new contact number. Sometimes this is because they don't want debt collectors to be able to find them, other times this is simply a mistake or they have forgotten to.

At times like this collection agents may speak with the post office, former neighbors, telephone companies, and credit bureaus to try to determine the new address. This activity is called "skip tracing," and the collection agents who do this have computer systems automatically track when businesses or people change their addresses or contact information on any of their open accounts. To Be Continued In Parts 2,3, 4, and 5

About the Author: Frank Cole

Mallory Megan works for Rapid Recovery Solution and writes articles on medical collection agencies. This article, Debt Collection Course For Beginners: A Lesson In Skip Tracing is available for free reprint.

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Debt Collection Course For Beginners: A Lesson In Skip Tracing