Recently, i’ve discovered just how committed some companies are to keeping us mired in debt. Last year, I got a check for $5,000 in the mail from a company that will remain nameless, simply because I’m trying to remove them from my life and I don’t wish to anger them. It was an actual check–a loan, of course, with a high interest rate of 21 percent; all I had to do was endorse it, deposit it, and the appropriate paperwork would follow. It happened to come at a time when, as a freelance writer, I was going through a dry spell in terms of placing articles. I told myself that the interest rate didn’t matter because I was going to pay off the loan entirely in a couple of months.
I wasn’t able to. The principal never seemed to go down since the interest rate was so high. Finally, in the past six months, I’ve been paying off large chunks of it and I now owe less than $1,000. But an interesting thing happened when I neared the $1,000 mark. This company went into high gear, using various means to try to pull me right back into debt. First, I started to get new checks to endorse and deposit–easy, just sign the back and be their hostage again. Those went into the trash. Then I started to get lovely embossed cards from them that looked vaguely like wedding invitations. Inside, under the company’s logo, were handwritten notes saying, “Please call me, I have wonderful news for you!” I’ve now gotten four of those and if I get another, I think I’ll send it back and tell them I don’t want to be married to them, I’m trying hard to divorce them.
Then they got creative with the bills. They would say I only had to pay $50, and I had three months in which to pay it. I sent in $300. The next month, I was billed for $40 and given four months to pay it. I sent in $200. Next month, our divorce will be final; I will send in the remainder of what I owe.
I have started to see these tactics as terribly diabolical on the part of this company, and I’m sure there are others who use similar tactics. I know in a capitalist society, they have a right to drum up business. And I know it’s my fault that I got into debt with them in the first place. But here’s where I think it gets sinister: someone there, probably the CEO, made a decision to relentlessly pursue anyone who was clearly trying to get out of debt. Obviously, it has become policy to use various means to entice someone to fall right back into the hole they are trying hard to climb out of. It’s absurd to think that I’m the only customer who has been pursued like this. And the more I ignore them and continue to climb out of that hole, the more persistent they have become.
I wonder if Suze Orman knows about this? I think I should write her so she can tell thousands of people that they have to be strong and resist these sinister campaigns devised by CEOs who probably haven’t seen personal credit card debt in decades and would never get caught signing one of those checks with a 21 percent interest fee. Next month, along with my final payment, I might send a lovely note informing them that we are now divorced, and their relentless pursuit of me didn’t work.
Or I could send a pretend process-server over with a pretend divorce document. No, that would cost money, and Suze would definitely frown on that.
