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nice1 said:

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Don Juan said:
a man always pay his debts, only a child hides from it...

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Lol bollocks,
they are the biggest con out.  See the % they take from people.  Fuck em.

Besides the whole economy is run on debt meaning its actually impossible to pay off the national debt by design.  Good luck with that.


Pay off your friends and family but ebay?  I couldn't give a fuck about them.

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johnm214 said:

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MisterPink said:
Better question; is $35 dollar worth taking a credit hit?

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What is the hit? 

As the collections agency has likely reported the debt proceeding to collections, if not ebay themselves as well, he will likely continue to have that reported regardless.  The only difference would be that by paying he will extend the time that the debt may be reported on his credit report and he will have the debt marked as paid after going to collections. 

Will this help him?  My understanding is that FICO scores and other common scores generally don't distinguish signifigantly between paid and unpaid collections accounts, which makes sense from the point of a potential creditor looking at your report, because if the account is defaulted they get screwed anyways.

Do you have a different understanding?  I realize that the closed nature of the scoring algorithms in use generally makes comparisons difficult, but the reports from people monitoring such things tends to suggest the above is true.

The only instance I've heard of where paying a collections account matters for credit purposes is when its a demand of the potential creditor, which would generally be for a signifigant credit source, such as a car or house loan.  In those cases I've heard of banks who demand prior debts be settled as a condition of approval.

If anyone else knows otherwise I'd love to hear it.

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zZZz said:
What can these collection agency really do?

I appreciate the help

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If your so broke you can't afford $35 dolalrs then most likely the only thing they can do is report it to your credit report and harrass you via mail and phone.  They'll also potentially call your family and other relations that appear connected to you if needed to contact you.  Its illegal for them to communicate that your a debtor, but they'll figure it out, as who else calls for someone with a nasty attitude and won't say their purpose other than perhaps the police?

Paying the debt will extend the statutorily permissable reporting period in the US for consumer reporting purposes.

They could try to garnish or seize any assets you have, but nobody's going to do that for 35$ and you likely don't have anything they could garnish or take anyways.

So your exposure is limited to a bad credit score, i.e. not getting services on credit such as a phone service, most checking accounts, credit cards, cable TV, housing/apartments, higher insurance rates, et cet, however; as stated previously I regard it as questionable whether paying will amount to any signifigant difference, though I'm not confident due to the secretive nature of credit scoring algorithms and most approval/pricing criteria for credit-related services.

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Luddite said:
Sell your blood to a blood bank and/or be an experimental subject in a medical experiment to raise money to pay your debt.

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I did that twice a week  for half a year to get by (plasma) when I was a young hippie.  Those were the good old days when you could almost live on that.

I was a runner and would run right after.  They filter a lot of free floating fat out of your blood when they do that and I would always shave a couple of minutes off my run and feel lots of energy.  Can't do that if you give whole blood.