In this econoomy, everyone is looking to make a dollar and improve their position. Also, everyone is looking to pay their bills promptly if they can. There is nothing worse from a financial standpoint when you are actually paying your bills, but a bill collector or creditor is hounding you and claiming you did not properly pay.
Given the size of many creditors and collection agencies today, mistakes are bound to happen. However, when these mistakes are made, the creditors and collection agencies need to take responsibility. They need to properly train their employees on how to listen to customers and not assume that everyone is a "deadbeat".
We have handled several cases involving these types of claims. Today, we settled a claim for wrongful garnishment where the creditor garnished a father's bank account on a son's judgment. When the father complained, they didn't listen, and when they realized the father was right, they wanted to keep his money and apply it to the son's judgment. You can't do that. Are they kidding? That $500 error cost them five (5) figures.
Today, some new clients employed me on a wrongful repossession of their truck. Clearly, they had documentation that they had made all of their payments on time. Yet, when they kept calling to let the company know, the employees wouldn't listen. One even hung up on the client. Finally, they repossessed the truck, and the clients had to spend their time to go up to their office and show them the documents which they had offered to show them a week earlier. This is a young couple with two kids. They each had to miss work as a result of this, and the stress is added to an already stressful life.
Of course, in this last situation, the company has an arbitration agreement. Why? A jury would pop them for what they did, but an arbitrator may not. So, what's their incentive to watch how they treat people? This is what is bad about arbitration. This is also an example of why keeping good records is necessary so that when these companies do wrong, you can call them out on it. If companies want to be so big and make more money, they have to pay the consequences for their mistakes.
