Credit Card Non Payment Can Have Bad Consequences

What can happen to you in a credit card non payment scenario? Well first off, the credit card companies will more than likely tag you as a delinquent member. The phone calls will start, friendly in tone at first. A gentle reminder that your payment is late.

Each successive month of non payment of credit card debt will bring about more phone calls from your creditors. They will call more frequently and more threatening in nature.  After a predetermined (by the creditor) amount of time has passed, the bank will give up on you and turn you over to an agency that specializes in collecting on overdue debts.

More than likely, this “collection agency” will not be part of the credit card company. These are pros that “buy” accounts that are late or delinquent. These agencies specialize in getting people to pay their charge card debts. Since they now own your debt, any money they collect becomes theirs, not the banks.

The bank has already given up, and they sell these delinquent accounts for pennies on the dollar to get them off their books. The banks and credit card companies would rather cut their losses. Debt collection can be costly and time consuming. It’s simply not worth it to them to try to collect debts.

Credit card companies can get a court order to have the ability to seize your bank account and use what’s in it to get paid, but again it’s not in their interest to do so.

Now you have a collection agency interested in your debt. They will try to use a lot of underhanded methods to try to get you to pay up. Remember, this is how they get paid.

You may have heard some of the bad stories connected with credit collection agencies. In fact, unfortunately many of these horror stories are true. Folks do experience them. The best thing you can do is to keep calm in the face of such threats. Most of them are just that…threats, and they are usually empty.

You may have heard things like people go to jail for credit card non payment. This just isn’t true.

Having too much debt is not considered a crime. This is based on the assumption that the credit cards were not paid for any reason.

This differs from check bouncing or breach of contract. These can be considered criminal.

You must be aware of this, because shady collection agencies will attempt to get you to write a check, or sign some sort of agreement to pay. These can then be used to start a criminal case. Be careful!

In case you are wondering, yes, credit card non payment will tank your credit history. Your score will go down, and you will have a hard time trying to get a loan or line of credit.

And unfortunately, employers, landlords and insurance companies sometimes base decisions on your credit score.

These days, it is imperative to keep your credit history clean, and your score high.

But there is some bright news. You can always improve your credit history and your score. It takes a bit of work, but is worth it.

If you don’t do something to correct your credit score, you may have to plan on living on cash for the rest of your life. This may not sound bad until you start looking at buy a car or a home. You will have to have a huge chunk of cash saved up. Most likely you won’t be able to get a loan.

And if you still have the credit card debt owned by a collection agency, expect to be hounded day and night. In fact, you can probably expect that your family, friends and neighbors and work will be called and harassed.

This quite possibly is the worst part of credit card non payment.

whether you tell your friends and family is up to you, but they will in all likelihood find out eventually. Better it come from you. Credit card non payment is very serious. Be aware of the consequences it may bring.