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291 words.
Past
Due Library Fines, and Parking Tickets, Unpaid Fees, Etc.
Being Turned Over to Debt Collectors
By
Author Mary Reed
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.
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