Past Due Library Fines, and Parking Tickets, Unpaid Fees, Etc.

According to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, consumers who ignore unpaid parking and speeding tickets, library fines, trash collection fees, dogcatcher fines and the like may be in for an unpleasant surprise -- a call from a private debt collector. A growing number of cash-strapped municipalities, who are looking for ways other than raising taxes and fees to boost their revenues, have begun working with outside debt collectors.

These municipalities include Chicago and San Diego, who been using private debt collectors since the late Nineties, Seattle, Anchorage, Austin, Florida’s Miami-Dade County, New York City, Baltimore and Dallas. In fact, this growing trend has spawned a new breed of debt collection firms that specialize in collecting debts for public agencies.

If your local government hires a private debt collector to collect one of your past due fines or fees, there is a greater likelihood that the debt will end up in your credit report and stay there for seven years. Furthermore, that information will seriously damage your credit score, regardless of whether the debt was a $12 library fine or a $15 parking ticket.

Obviously, the best way to avoid such a problem is to pay your municipal fines and fees when they are due. However, if you don’t pay one of them and you get a call from a debt collector as a result, try to negotiate an agreement with the debt collector that if you pay your debt, the collector will remove the collection information from your credit file. If the debt collector agrees, try to get it in writing. Also, be sure to check your credit history after you have paid he debt so you can be sure that the collection account no longer shows up.

Article Source: http://www.debtfinancearticles.com.

About the Author:
Mary Reed is an accomplished author of books on personal finance and the law, including the StopDebtCOllectorsCold.com eBook. Mary writes as well as ghost writes books and magazine articles on consumer and small business legal and financial matters. She has co-authored Good Advice for a Bad Economy, The Everyday Law Kit for Dummies and Divorce for Dummies, and she has ghost-written twelve other books as well.