Accurate Or Not, Consumer Complaint List Needs to be Addressed

Yesterday, insideARM ran a news article titled, “Debt Collection Tops 2007 Consumer Complaint List”. Maybe the article should have been titled “Here We Go Again” or “So what else is new?” Personally, I would prefer it be titled “Let’s get the facts straight please.”

According to the National Association of Attorneys General, complaints against debt collectors topped a national list of consumer complaints for 2007. NAAG (or should we simply call them NAG as their name implies? Sorry but I could not resist) was formed over 100 years ago to “serve as a key resource to assist Attorneys General and their staffs to respond effectively to emerging state and federal legal issues”. The list of consumer complaints was compiled by NAAG based on an informal nationwide survey conducted by the group.

Let’s take a moment to break this down. The ranking was admittedly based upon an informal survey. Who was surveyed? How many people were surveyed? Were disgruntled debtors surveyed exclusively? Was the survey truly broad enough to include all walks of life nationwide? I highly doubt it but we will try to obtain the study and find out. We will let you know our findings.

Secondly, it said that NAAG serves as a “key resource to assist Attorneys General and their staffs to respond effectively to emerging state and federal legal issues”. Let me get this straight: an informal survey is conducted, questionably inaccurate results are compiled, and they claim to be a key resource in the Attorneys General quest to right a wrong. Does anyone else find this troubling and totally misleading?

Lastly, the FTC was sited in the article that complaints against debt collectors topped its list for last year. ACA International, on behalf of its members of credit and collection professionals, did a wonderful job of dissecting these complaints and I believe they found out that more than half of them were made erroneously. It also worth noting that the Better Business Bureau says that nearly 75% of complaints were determined to be resolved to the satisfaction of the consumers.

Are legitimate complaints made against bill collectors? Absolutely! Are there too many complaints made against bill collectors? Arguably, however we can never lose sight of the volume of accounts handled overall and handled properly by debt collectors on the same yearly basis. I would venture to say that on a percentage basis the debt collection industry would not even make the list. What do you think?