Debt has not disappeared during the Pandemic. Meet a Man Who Will Collect Work.
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Among all consumer protections that lawmakers spread the pandemic to Americans, easing debt collection was not one of them. While emergency laws allowed for the imposition of certain types of debts on people student loans and mortgages in custody, those in other forms of debt (such as credit card, car, and salary loans) had no legal protection. Quiet debt collection he roared because the pandemic caused massive death, disease, and unemployment.
Not only did the collection companies operate in the last year, they also relocated labor to lower-cost labor markets as the U.S. jobless rate rose. BuzzFeed News spoke to a person who worked in Tijuana, Mexico, in the office of an American company in the third-party collection. He asked to be identified with a nickname to protect his identity. “Rick,” who is 20 years old and a Mexican citizen, said he went back and forth in an automated calling system that converted agents like him through hundreds of calls 10 hours a day. He recalled that he simply tried to take money from people who didn’t have it and even a person who was being treated in the hospital for coronavirus. “I feel bad because I also have debts,” he said. At the beginning of the year, he left.
Here’s Rick’s story, edited for clarity and length.
I was unemployed In 2020 I recently moved to Tijuana. I saw a job posting on Facebook, where I had some friends who were working on it, saying they were hiring for customer care and pickups. The ad seemed like a customer care job because you had to have a customer care experience. Until I started training I was told that we would charge between those who were calling and those who were trying to make payments. And when we had more experience, we called customers. I did not know.
That threw me a little bit because they weren’t really in front of me. I used to work for call centers, but for customer service, not for charges. It was so scary for me. But I needed work. So I tried my best. We only had two weeks to learn everything in training. Since for some of us English is not the first language (my first language is Spanish), we had to learn new words like “delay” and “global payment” and what the borrower and creditor are. It was so interesting and challenging at the same time.
I went in at 6am and worked 10 hours a day until 4pm because of COVID, so we were separated from the two seats. We always had to put on face masks. There were about 90 agents in the group.
We have a system that always marks you throughout the day. The account number automatically appears on the screen, and we would gain access to the account. Dialing takes more than 30 seconds, so we would have a minute or less to see their information and how much they owed. We just had to go in and start the call without knowing anything about the history of the account. Sometimes the system connected us and people were already saying, “Hello? Hello? “I didn’t feel ready with so little time to prepare to take care of something so important. That’s definitely something that should be improved, because people are going through bad times.
Typically, the system dialed more than 200 calls a day, back and forth. Most did not respond. I would talk to about 50 people a day. All customers were in the US. They were mostly personal loans and car loans. If I had to go to the bathroom or take a break, I could set up a stop-call function, even if the supervisors didn’t quite like it.
We don’t really control how many times we call the customer. We have no system to know. Sometimes a person would receive 10 calls, which would be exacerbated. Sometimes on the same day we would reconnect with the same person, and we would have to pretend we didn’t know or apologize.
Once my colleague called a person, and he was very crazy. He said he received at least 20 calls that day, and that he would not pay, that he was done with it. He was actually in the hospital. She said she lost her husband to COVID and was now in the hospital getting COVID oxygen and was in very poor condition. But the truth is that someone else would probably try to contact him two hours later, and the next day, because we couldn’t make a call again.
We had to meet some metrics. But it wasn’t how much money we raised. A quality assurance agent got us our “customer service”. They were trained to evaluate our calls. We had scripts, and we had to say a few scripts verbatim, literally. So most of the time we evaluated it according to the customer service we offered; if you miss a single word, for example, you would get a zero. I agreed.
In our scripts, you first do the verification process. When it came time to collect, the consumer would explain the situation because they were unable to pay for COVID or not working. We should try to get paid at least twice. We could offer a deferral, for example, or maybe a payment plan. On a normal day, more than half of the people I spoke to couldn’t afford anything. Zero dollars.
I feel bad because I also have debts. I also have things to pay for. Back then, trying to pay for it wasn’t easy for me. Even without a pandemic, it is difficult to demand money. But it’s more of a challenge to know that many people are experiencing something that has had an impact. I felt guilty for asking people for money, but at the same time we had to continue with our work. We weren’t trying to get involved [the consumer]; we were there to gather, and that’s what our supervisors reminded us of throughout the experience.
The salary was about 3,000 Mexican pesos [$150] per week. We are very close to San Diego, so we tend to have a higher rental cost here. So I’m able to survive with that. It’s nothing compared to when he went to college. But the truth is, I know that because it’s an American company, they pay more.
The job was mostly to make people angry with you because you’re trying to bother and gather. Because of my experience working in call centers since I was 17, I was used to people shouting at me. But it’s hard at the end of the day; it’s hard for someone to yell at you and want to say things. I left my job as a debt collector in February. I would love to do something else. I think the reason I’m still working for a call center is because I’m used to it. And he actually pays better than other jobs because they are American companies. ●
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