News Site Says Nothing New About Collection Agencies

South Carolina’s The State website has two things to tell us today:

(1) People don’t like debt collectors.

(2) Banks want to lend you money.

Those two statements could fuel a perpetual motion machine, if one existed. (Which, sadly, one doesn’t. It’s as if M.C. Escher was lying to us the whole time with his pictures.) Stated another way: People love borrowing money; people aren’t so crazy about paying that borrowed money back.

What ends up being so frustrating about such news stories as “Debt collection draws complaints in S.C.” is that it’s actually not a news story the way it’s written. That people complain about debt collectors is a no-brainer — it’s like stating that trips to the dentist are stressful. Being in debt is damaging to a person’s ego; having to acknowledge that debt is more damaging still. The article points out that “consumers made nearly 5,500 complaints in 2010.”

What the article doesn’t point out? How many of those are legitimate complaints.

An industry that’s in the uncomfortable position of holding other people accountable is not going to win popularity contests. The fact, too, that there are some bad apples out there (to cop a euphamism) working in an industry that’s already struggling with likability issues doesn’t help matters at all. But news stories like these reinforce a fiction: it’s not the debt that’s important, but the complaints.

This is further compounded in situations like what The State is pulling: following up a story about complaints against debt collectors with another brief about how banks are eager to lend money. It’s not like Americans need more credit to get out of their credit crisis just like I’ve finally come to grips with the fact that following long bouts of sedentariness with large bowls of cake isn’t doing me any favors, either. (In my defense, the cake is delicious.)

This, of course, brings us to today’s Very Important Poll: