According to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal,
consumers who ignore unpaid parking and speeding tickets, library fines,
trash collection fees, dogcatcher fines and the like may be in for an
unpleasant surprise -- a call from a private debt collector. A growing
number of cash-strapped municipalities, who are looking for ways other
than raising taxes and fees to boost their revenues, have begun working
with outside debt collectors. These municipalities include Chicago and
San Diego, who been using private debt collectors since the late Nineties,
Seattle, Anchorage, Austin, Florida’s Miami-Dade County, New York City,
Baltimore and Dallas. In fact, this growing trend has spawned a new breed
of debt collection firms that specialize in collecting debts for public
agencies.
If your local government hires a private debt collector
to collect one of your past due fines or fees, there is a greater likelihood
that the debt will end up in your credit report and stay there for seven
years. Furthermore, that information will seriously damage your credit
score, regardless of whether the debt was a $12 library fine or a $15
parking ticket.
Obviously, the best way to avoid such a problem is to
pay your municipal fines and fees when they are due. However, if you don’t
pay one of them and you get a call from a debt collector as a result,
try to negotiate an agreement with the debt collector that if you pay
your debt, the collector will remove the collection information from your
credit file. If the debt collector agrees, try to get it in writing. Also,
be sure to check your credit history after you have paid he debt so you
can be sure that the collection account no longer shows up.
About the Author:
Mary Reed is an accomplished author
of books on personal finance and the law, including the
StopDebtCollectorsCold.com eBook. Mary writes as well as ghost writes
books and magazine articles on consumer and small business legal and financial
matters. She has co-authored Good Advice for a Bad Economy, The Everyday
Law Kit for Dummies and Divorce for Dummies, and she has ghost-written
twelve other books as well.
Copyright2006 by Mary Reed, all rights reserved.
