Fight Back Against Unfair Debt Collection Practices: Know Your Rights and Protect Yourself from Threats, Lies, and Intimidation

13. Retention

As the onset of spring melts the mounds of snow in the parking lot into a slushy mess, we get a chance to work an entirely different sort of debt than we have been collecting up until now. One day, we are quickly huddled in the training room and given instructions on how to work “retention” business. Customer retention is very different work from the collections involving older, charged-off accounts. Once an account is charged off, the debtor is no longer a customer of the bank, but an adversary. By contrast, retention accounts are hovering in a limbo between healthy and defunct. Because they have missed one or more payments, the holders of these cards can’t make further charges. It’s not too late, however, to bring the card current. ...