It had only been six weeks since the personal trainer received the bill for an ambulance trip, taken after he sustained significant injuries while intervening in a fight between his two dogs.The money he had left was only just stretching to cover food, rent and bills.
“Within the next hour I received another phone call from the exact same guy,” Fakhri says. “ ‘You said you would put it on hold for three weeks.’ He said: ‘Sorry, it was an accident. I’ll update the notes in the system.’ “Paying back old debts is not their priority in . And the extra stress that debt collectors bring – the constant phone calls in particular – to people who are already at breaking point drives more calls to our already stretched service. We are … referring more people to Lifeline than we ever have.”
The couple were also told they must pay hundreds of dollars to cover the money the firm spent in trying to recover a disputed debt from them, an actby law unless debtors agree to it in their original contract. The couple claim there was nothing in their contract with the tradesman allowing Marshall Freeman to charge them from the costs of its debt recovery work.
“For others, it might be even worse,” the husband says. “That’s a massive power imbalance. And when you have a power imbalance, you have injustice.” “Unfortunately, we are not seeing some debt collectors meet this standard of behaviour, and see some debt collectors causing further distress to people experiencing vulnerability,” he says.
He has seen some debt collection firms falsely tell debtors that if payment is not made a default will be listed on their credit report, jeopardising their credit rating.In other cases, he says firms try to trick debtors into responding to correspondence about historic debts, something that automatically triggers an extension to the usual six-year time limit on debt collection activity.
A spokesperson said the ACCC was aware of the potential for increased debt collection activity due to cost-of-living pressures. The ACCC, while effective, took significant time to investigate complaints and take matters to court, he says. That delay – while necessary to allow proper investigations – could have serious consequences.
“Complaints have increased across most areas in our banking and finance jurisdiction, reflecting in part increasing financial stress in the community,” Afca’s lead ombudsman for banking and finance, Natalie Cameron, tells Guardian Australia.
Source: Loan Digest (loandigest.net)
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