Dealing with collection agencies (negotiating fees)

[Leee]

Hello,
My wife and I have been in some real financial trouble lately and we're just starting to get our head above water until we got hit with another massive collection amount.

I just finished having my paycheck garnished for 2 months. (My wife is on disability) And now as soon as I'm making the last payment the same collection agency hits us with another court document and is once again threatening to garnish my wages.

This all comes from a series of bounced checks my wife wrote. We didn't deliberately set out to cheat the businesses we wrote checks to, but nonetheless they bounced and now we have to pay.

But my question is can you negotiate (in ANY way) with these collection agencies to bring the amount down. The total amount of the bounced checks was $1024, adding collection costs of $600, handling fees of $500 and statutory damages of $1750. All totaling well over $4200.

I called the collection agency (which has no heart or soul) and told them our situation, and asked is there any way they can reduce the charges. They were willing to take two payment of $2000 each, reducing the charges by a whopping $200! (not very helpful)

Since they don't seem to be willing to negotiate any further, would I have better luck taking this to court and pleading with the judge to make the fines more reasonable?

And I'm guessing that hiring a lawyer would eat up any of the savings I would get from hiring one, so I really wouldn't be saving any money that way either.

Thanks for any advice,
Lee

 

[jharris352]

How much money do you have to give them in a lump sum?

 

[Leee]

I told them I could not pay all of it at once, so they allowed me to break it up into two payments of (approx.) $2000 each.

But today the most amazing, unexpected thing happened. They called me and said that after reviewing my account, along with my willingness to pay right away, they are going to reduce the amount owed to just $2500, which is $1500 less than the original amount.

It's still a lot of money, but much more reasonable. And it kind of answered my own question that, yes, collection agencies can be flexible if they want to be.

EDIT: I think they just took off the "Statutory Fees", whatever they are. And while I'm grateful they did that, something tells me they didn't do it totally out of the kindness of their hearts.

That's why I was posting in this forum, to find out all the rules and regs of Collection Agencies, especially when the courts get involved.

 

[jharris352]

They blasted you with an amount that scared you so they came back with a significantly lower amount they were willing to take the first time but they needed to pressure you first. If you can pay it do it. good luck

 

[mightymoose]

I believe the statute of limitations in WA is 6 years... kinda long. If the bad checks happen to be that old then it is possible you won't have to pay anything at all. You will still have the negative mark on your credit report, but they can't get a judgment if it is beyond the limit.