I told you that I’m a former employee of a major credit card company, and used to perform collections activities for the company. I used to employ a lot of shady tactics to get people to pay their bills and try to maintain their high balances and "good standing" with the company. In truth, many of those card members never paid off their bills, and only delayed the inevitable bankruptcy filing.

For most people, one of the most frustrating part of collections is the telephone calls. It’s a lot easier today with caller id to screen out our phone calls, so many people employ this tactic to avoid the creditor. Remarkably, even with the do not call list, many people still receive marketing phone calls.

Well, good news, the FTC is proposing changes that will tighten some the debt collection laws. Most notably, the proposal will restrict phone calls to cellular phones and text messages. With the increase in the number of people moving from traditional landlines to cell phones, this may be a good opportunity to decrease some of those harrassing behaviors.

This blog, written by Sonya Smith-Valentine summarizes some of the changes.