The Boston Globe has just laid out a one–two–three–four-part series that both politicians and Pulitzer Prize panels should be carefully studying. The Globe team wrote about what happens when someone falls behind on a credit card. The stories are shocking: People have been sent to jail over credit card debts. People have been bullied and threatened and treated like dirt. People who needed their cars to get to work were forced to pay ransoms of thousands of dollars more than the original debt just to get their cars back after a collection agent wrongfully seized it. The stories show how hard-working people hanging on to the fragile edge of the middle class had their lives turned upside down by a credit card bill they couldn’t repay.
But the part of the story that really tore at me was the regulatory angle. The Globe articles are replete with stories of courts that rubber-stamping creditors claims even when creditors list false address so the debtor never even gets notice of the court hearing. Read about collection agents who run the show at small claims courts. Read about constables with criminal records for assault who are given the right to arrest people for non-payment of debts. Read about attorneys general who don’t care what goes on.
It isn’t just the debt collection agents who get a black eye in this series; it is the government officials who are charged with the responsibility to watch out for the public and who instead made themselves the dupes of out-of-control debt collectors.
Do three things: First, read the series. Second, drop an email to the Globe to tell them what you thought this makes a huge difference on the amount of follow-up reporting. Third, post a blog here about what you thought was the most outrageous act or your view about what is happing.
I want to taste this awful stuff one more time. The people who were featured in the Globe articles deserve at least that much, and the officials who didn’t help them deserve so much more.
