The fallout from Dateline NBC’s debt collections episode has generated a real buzz in the collections industry.
Just this week we saw this editorial from InsideARM, which offers some pretty good rebuttals to all the collection agency boneheads that were posting on that site. All of their comments since the airing have been about how unfair Dateline’s treatment was of the “Asset Receivable Industry.”
Then, of course, you have NARCA (National Association of Retail Collections Attorneys) coming out with their press release arguing about how unfair the treatment was by NBC’s Dateline.
The point that these debt collectors continue to miss is that Dateline NBC and reporter Chris Hansen never claimed they were showing typical behavior of the debt collection industry. They simply were showing that in many cases (and they did show a number of them), there were horrible debt collectors, such as LHR, out there that are violating debtors’ rights with little or no regard for the law. “Where’s the Outrage” from Paul Legrady makes that point very well and challenges his colleagues in debt collection to try and work toward fixing the bad actors and not just griping about press coverage.
I could not agree more.
Tags: Dateline NBC, InsideARM, LHR
