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A look into the dark side of Debt Collecting - interesting and instructive

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pipeguy
Senior Contributor

A look into the dark side of Debt Collecting - interesting and instructive

Message 1 of 4
3 REPLIES 3
pizzadude
Credit Mentor

Re: A look into the dark side of Debt Collecting - interesting and instructive

 

Wow, that's a huge amount of debt:

 

"From 2006 to 2009, for example, the nation’s top nine debt buyers purchased almost 90 million consumer accounts with more than $140 billion in “face value.”

And they bought at a steep discount. On average, they paid just 4.5 cents on the dollar"

 

Very interesting article! 

March2010 FICO® ~ 695 TU, 653 EQ, 697 EX
Message 2 of 4
Revelate
Moderator Emeritus

Re: A look into the dark side of Debt Collecting - interesting and instructive


@pizzadude wrote:

 

Wow, that's a huge amount of debt:

 

"From 2006 to 2009, for example, the nation’s top nine debt buyers purchased almost 90 million consumer accounts with more than $140 billion in “face value.”

And they bought at a steep discount. On average, they paid just 4.5 cents on the dollar"

 

Very interesting article! 


So they spent 6.3B on a total debt of 140B.

 

Consumer spending for the last quarter is estimated at 10910.5B, or ~11T.

 

The article's number may be shock and awe for an individual, it's trivial when we're talking aggregate economy.  Looked at sloppily estimating 200M adults, that's $700 in debt each that went to the buyers: I know average isn't the right way to likely do this, but we're also talking a lot of paper that's way beyond SOL too hence the substantial discount.  Just doesn't seem like a large problem compared to other consumer debt metrics?  

 

Wouldn't surprise me if we had a larger value than that in unclaimed / abandoned financial assets.

 

Agreed is an interesting look at it, thank you for posting pipeguy!

 

 




        
Message 3 of 4
lonelyisland
Frequent Contributor

Re: A look into the dark side of Debt Collecting - interesting and instructive

Now I am going to have nightmares:

 

Larry told me that he had often made deals in his car in which the buyer gave him cash, and he handed the buyer a thumb drive with a spreadsheet containing the names, addresses, Social Security numbers, credit-card balances or loan amounts of several thousand debtors. 

CARDS: CAPITAL ONE QUICKSILVER 10K | NORDSTROM STORE CARD 2K
Message 4 of 4
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