Being hounded by collections agencies or just people who want your money can be a scary experience, but you can manage your own emotions.
My tankless water heater died at the end of December. In terms of experiences I’d recommend, this wouldn’t be on the list.
Hot water is like electricity; you really don’t think too much about it until it’s not there, and then you really really appreciate it.
The following started out as a story of mismatched expectations and high costs, and ended up being the closest thing to being hounded by a collections agency that I’ve ever experienced.
And it led me to think about this process, and the stress of it, in a way that I hadn’t really had to consider before.
Table of Contents
What is collections?
When you don’t pay your bills, creditors have multiple ways to get you to pay up.
The main difference is whether the debt is “secured” or “unsecured”. Secured just means that there’s a tangible thing (collateral) associated with the debt. For example, a car loan is secured by the car itself.
Secured debts are easier for a creditor to manage, because they have the ability to take back the collateral. Don’t pay your car loan, they repossess your car. Don’t pay your mortgage, they foreclose on your house.
It’s the unsecured debts that are harder to collect. If you don’t pay your credit card bill, what is the credit card company going to do? Come to your house and find all that stuff you bought on Amazon? I think not.
Lacking any other standing, they often resort to emotional tactics.
They will bug you and send you notices, and eventually, you will be sent to collections. Collections are these companies whose purpose is to get you to pay up. They buy debts for pennies on the dollar, and if they can get any money out of you, it’s a win for them.
And some collections places can be vile. They’ll resort to all manner of tactics to get you to pay up. A lot of these things are illegal, but I’ve heard stories about them calling people at their jobs, bothering their spouse, sending threatening messages, you name it.
These threatening behaviors are designed to make you anxious and want to pay up to relieve the pressure.
Which brings me to my story.
A replacement water heater
I was able to schedule a plumber the replacement of the water heater after only two (very cold) weeks.
“You’ll have to get an electrician in there too,” the guy said.
Why? “We’re not authorized to plug it in.” Oh.
So I arranged an electrician to show up the same day. Hopefully the electrician’s job would be simple. I already had a water heater hook up, right?
In the end, the plumber hooked up the new unit without much incident, and I was out a pile of money roughly twice what I thought it would be.
Then the electrician came in, decided I needed all new wiring, and did what I can only assume was a Supermarket Sweep at the electrician’s store. He then spent hours tinkering and putting it all together, while I worried just like I do when a taxi driver intentionally takes the long route to increase the fare.
Also, this was Christmas Eve, and I had places to go, and so did the electrician. And in the end, he got it all set up, and flew out of there, leaving a mess for me to clean up and a cover to the unit that wouldn’t quite go on right.
Lost in the shuffle was that the electrician never asked for payment, never told me what it would me, didn’t say anything.
I was left with a new water heater plugged in, but uncertain about what would happen next.
A visit from the “Draft Board”
But of course, I couldn’t have been so lucky as to have gotten a free install. The head of the electrician team contacted me soon afterward, and asked for me to call him.
To be honest, this wasn’t high on my priority list. I was away for the holidays, and it wasn’t really up to me to ask the electrician how much I owed him. An invoice would have been fine.
Eventually, he did send an invoice, and the cost of the whole thing was so wildly out of proportion to what I expected, that I didn’t even know what to do about it. There was no way I was paying that much.
And this is when things got interesting. Over the next week, the electrician started texting me, emailing me, and calling me, multiple times a day. He was never mean, just persistent.
And I started to kind of panic. I didn’t quite know what to do about this giant bill (which, by the way, I never agreed to or even got an estimate for in advance). And being busy and away, it wasn’t a super high priority to get on this. I didn’t blow them off, but I had lots of questions, and wanted to see if I could reduce the price.
But let me tell you, the feeling of being hounded by someone who wants a lot of money from you was really scary.
It started to remind me of that old cartoon where Daffy Duck was being hounded by the little man from the Draft Board, trying to serve him with his draft notice. But scarier.
How to cope
I was lucky, in that the person stayed very cordial and polite even through his persistence.
But I know that when you’re being trailed by someone who wants money from you, they are not always going to be polite.
This is scary, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
So here are some takeaways from this process:
- It’s just business. Their urgency is a tactic to get you to pay quickly. That doesn’t mean you have to, at least not on their time scale. The exception to this is if there’s a foreclosure or repossession on the table, but they must tell you this with plenty of notice.
- Know your rights. Know what collectors are allowed to say and do, and what they’re not. The CFPB has a good resource on this.
- File a complaint. If you’re being harassed, file a complaint. Here’s some info from the FDIC on filing a complaint.
- Make a plan. If the collector is not harassing you, you can engage with them to make a plan to pay your debt. You can ask to come up with a payment plan, or even if they’d be willing to accept a lower amount. If you agree to anything, make sure you get it in writing, because not everyone will honor their verbal agreements.
- Their anger is not your problem. Professionals/collectors and the like may act upset and even might yell at you. That is not fun, but it’s important to separate their needs from your response to them. Just because they’re angry doesn’t mean that you’ve done anything wrong.
- Take deep breaths. The situation is scary, but you are safe. These people can’t hurt you in the way that you might fear than they can.
Resolution
Luckily for me, this wasn’t a situation where a debt of mine actually went to collections. But honestly, the feeling was much the same as what I’ve heard from people who have dealt with collections. It’s scary to be contacted over and over when you’re not prepared to deal with it.
In the end, I paid my bill after a little bit of haggling, and everyone was placated, even though it still cost over $1,000 more than I had anticipated. (Reminder that if you have savings buckets, these things can be much less disruptive.)
Most importantly, I now have hot water again. And to be honest, after going through this whole process, I kind of need a shower. I’m glad I’ve got a tankless, so I don’t need to worry about running out of hot water.
