Every consumer should know that invoking current consumer protection laws will stop the collection activities of a junk debt buyer.

Junk debt buyers invest in discharged credit card debt for pennies on the dollar. They also sell and resell the debt they have purchased to other junk debt buyers for smaller and smaller sums of money. Business Week, as an example, reported Portfolio Recovery Associates, a large national junk debt buyer, paid $791.6 million over an 11 year period for $35.3 billion of debt in 16.7 million customer accounts. For each dollar of credit card debt that averages less than three cents.

According to the Credit Card Debt Survival Guide, those numbers indicate a junk debt buyer does not have to collect on even half of the debt purchased. They would be quite profitable, if they collected on a third of the debt.

A general lack of consumer knowledge of the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) gives junk debt buyers confidence in their ability to collect on these cheap debts. Junk debt buyers through their collection agencies mail tens of thousands of collection letters to consumers holding discharged credit card debt. Most addressees do not properly answer this initial communication in writing asking for documentation of the debt. If a consumer knew this batched debt comes on computer tape in groupings of thousands, sometimes millions, of accounts with little or no original documentation, they might respond more confidently.

When contacted by telephone and bullied with a false lawsuit, many consumers out of honesty and ignorance of the FDCPA admit to the undocumented debt and make the debt collector’s task easier.

Junk debt buyers’ and their collection agents’ debt collection efforts, unlike the original credit-card-bank creditors, are covered by the FDCPA. With a properly crafted written response, like the ones that can be found in the Credit Card Debt Survival Guide, these debt owners and collectors must stop their collection activities including no negative marks on a consumer’s credit report.

Related posts:

• Be the Consumer Credit Card Debt Collectors Do Not Want to Collect From
• What to Do with a Court Summons for Credit Card Debt
• How to Respond to a Court Summons for Credit Card Debt
• A Phone Call from a Credit Card Debt Collector? . . . You Do Not Need to Take It.
• Don’t Take Phone Calls from Credit Card Debt Collectors