Sunday, February 8, 2009

Can collection agency sue for a debt?



Can collection agency sue for a debt? This was the biggest question staring at me in September last year when I lost my high paying job thanks to the leveraging of a major financial firm which lead to their bankruptcy. I asked many of my friends about this but none had an answer as to can collection agency sue for a debt? or not. Hopefully I pulled myself out of that mess. But if you are thinking around the same lines then here is the solution for you.

First of all if you have taken debt and are not paying up then the collection agency is not the victim, it is just a third party collecting funds on your banks behalf. So technically they can sue you but practically then don’t because they are not losing the money. Now the next question which will arise in your mind is so the collection agency cannot sue me but can the bank or the lender do that. The simple answer is yes they can and sometimes in extreme cases they actually do sue you. The bank/lender’s first move when you don’t pay is to hire the collection agency and when they are not able to make you cough the money then question of a lawsuit comes into the picture. Again the actual cases where the bank/lender sues you for the money are pretty unheard for as these are the most extreme steps taken by the bank as this hurts there image too, but that doesn’t mean you can stop paying them. I hope this answers your question can collection agency sue for a debt?

Now the next thing on your mind after ‘can collection agency sue for a debt?’ should be the options you have to pay off your debt:
• The first and foremost thing is to understand that when you are thinking of the question ‘can collection agency sue for a debt?’ it is pretty clear that you are not able to pay them. So the best option would be to renegotiate your debt.
• The second option is only viable when your are having debts from multiple sources and when negotiating fails, then the best thing you can do is to pay off all your debts by taking a loan from a source which offers the lowest interest rate of them all. This can be a potentially risky step and you will need to carefully scrutinize your financial position before taking this decision.
So the conclusion to your question ‘can collection agency sue for a debt?’ is that yes the collection agency can sue you, but it is more likely that your bank or lender will sue you instead of the collection agency because it’s the bank’s money not the collection agency’s.