One thing that's not mentioned in this article is that credit card companies will sometimes make last-ditch "clear your debt at a discount" offers before passing your debt on to a collection agency.
This happened to me many years ago. In the wake of the '08 financial crisis, I'd lost my job abruptly and decided to go travelling.
I'd accumulated a balance that was fairly substantial for me at the time (on the order of $10-15k, IIRC) and had been struggling to make the payments. I'd probably been 2-3 months behind on multiple occasions over the course of a year or so when a letter appeared that essentially said "we don't like you and we're going to close your account and pass your debt to a collection agency. However, if you pay off a portion of your balance in 4 monthly payments, and don't miss any of those payment dates, we'll wipe the rest."
I don't recall exactly what the discount was, but it was very substantial. In total I only had to pay something like 30-40% of the balance that I owed, so it was a very good deal. I'm not normally one to skip out on my debts but this was a huge relief to have a chance to be free of that debt: I pulled a lot of strings to make those payments on time!
True to their word, they wiped my entire balance and closed my account, and I never heard from them again (nor any collection agencies).
This happened to me many years ago. In the wake of the '08 financial crisis, I'd lost my job abruptly and decided to go travelling.
I'd accumulated a balance that was fairly substantial for me at the time (on the order of $10-15k, IIRC) and had been struggling to make the payments. I'd probably been 2-3 months behind on multiple occasions over the course of a year or so when a letter appeared that essentially said "we don't like you and we're going to close your account and pass your debt to a collection agency. However, if you pay off a portion of your balance in 4 monthly payments, and don't miss any of those payment dates, we'll wipe the rest."
I don't recall exactly what the discount was, but it was very substantial. In total I only had to pay something like 30-40% of the balance that I owed, so it was a very good deal. I'm not normally one to skip out on my debts but this was a huge relief to have a chance to be free of that debt: I pulled a lot of strings to make those payments on time!
True to their word, they wiped my entire balance and closed my account, and I never heard from them again (nor any collection agencies).