When you hear about collection agencies, do you think about commercials like the one in which someone is avoiding the phone because they’re dealing with a mountain of debt? That is actually a more realistic commercial than most because people do sometimes avoid collection agencies. And collection agencies make a lot of calls to people who are behind in their payments.

This is the point: collection agencies are companies or sometimes lawyers, who hire out their services to collect a debt to a creditor who may be a service provider, apartment manager or credit card company etc.

The creditor will send your bill and eventually warnings about turning the bill over to a collection agency. If you don’t respond with payment they give the job to a collection agency. This is how they cut their losses. The elapsed time until they sell the bill to the collection agency is between 3 to 12 months.

The collection agency may not contact you by phone or mail, but just watch and wait for you as you are going about your daily business.

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