Jeff Michael: Repair Your Credit and Knock Out Your Debt
I highly recommend this book because I wrote it.
Edie Milligan: Tips from the Top: Targeted Advice from America's Top Money Minds
I have about a dozen entries in this book.
I just got off the phone with Beta Wayne of CINQ Radio in Montreal, Quebec. GREAT interview. He'd actually read a lot of the book before he called, and his questions were very well informed.
We recorded the interview, so I don't know when it will air; I'll post the date and time if I can.
I just completed an interview with Ross MacDonald on Mojo Radio in Toronto, Canada.
It was a great interview; I was on for a full 45 mintues, and we got many plugs in for the book, Repair Your Credit And Knock Out Your Debt.
It was a faster-paced, more energetic interview than I've had before. My last interview with Chuck Jaffe was much more talk-radio style, while Mojo Radio ("Talk Radio for Guys.") was more like a sports talk show.
I hope many of their listeners go out and find the book, since we didn't have time for really deep answers to the listeners' questions. (All the anwers are in the book, though!)
And of course, we had to plug Springboard, my beloved CCCS in Southern California.
Public libraries are starting to use professional debt collectors to collect overdue books, according to this USA Today story.
Hoo boy. I don't have major problems with debt collectors who work directly for a creditor or bank (if you loaned someone money and they didn't repay, you'd call them night and day until they repaid you, right?) My big problem is with third-party debt collectors, and that's what we're talking about here.
I don't know anything specific about Unique Management Services that isn't in the story above, but my experiences with other bottom-feeding scumbag collectors like Sherman Acquisitions has been universally bad. For one thing, these guys love to sell each other uncollectable accounts and fraudulent accounts resulting from identity theft.
Yeah. I've several acquaintances who have asked me to help them get accounts cleared from their credit reports because they don't belong there.... one friend found he had written a lot of bad checks to a department store on a bank account he'd never opened. It took a lot of time and effort, filing police reports, writing letters, just about everything you'd see on the FTC's IDtheft site... and finally we got those accounts cleared up.
So after we finally got all of those fraudulent notices off of his credit report what did this department store do? They sold the account to a collection agency. Yeah. And the process started all over again from the beginning. I have no doubt that collector will hand the debt off to a bigger scumbag collector, and we'll have to do it all over again. (I won't say what department store sold a debt they knew to be a result of Identity Theft, but their initials are Macy's.)
The same thing happened to one of my brothers... some petty $67 dollar charge was showing up delinquent on his credit report. We established he'd never incurred the debt, and the account had been placed on his credit report in error. Thankfully, it didn't take hundreds of hours to get that one corrected. But sure enough, a couple of months later, Sherman Acquisitions showed up on his credit report with a late on that same account. And the cycle goes on.
Third party debt collectors don't know anything but the amount they're after and your name. They wreak a lot of havoc on your credit, often completely in error, and they're the most notorious violators of the FDCPA (Fair Debt Collections Practices Act). And now they're going to pursue library fines.
Lord help us.
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