Synapses blog Aghh , grammer

Coland Enterprises is crap

A few years ago I ran into problems and was off work for a while. During that period I lived off my credit card from Westpac, bad idea. I didn't get a job as quickly as I thought and due to some nasty work of my ex I had another debt collector chasing me for a debt that was later proven to not be mine , but the net effect resulted in my credit card going to Coland Enterprises in Napier, strange considering I don't live there.

Any how without a job and lacking alot of money I thought Colin from Colands was great for letting me pay off a 2 grand debt at $10 a week. we went from one job to another never making a huge amount of money to make ends meet , but through all that I kept up the payments , after all they were only $10 eventually we forgot all about the debt , the payments were set up as an automatic payment and we never heard from colin for over 2 years. then one day I get a summons to court.

Turns out we had a mix up in our budget and I missed a few payments. Not a huge amount and something I could have fixed up pretty quickly if I had been given the opportunity, hell while I was at it I could have upped my payments as well but when I called Colin he wasn't even interested. His words were " Its NOT my job to chase people for money" wait .... not you job to chase people for money ? wtf your a debt collector Colin Hardie , you fckn dog the bounty hunter wannabe retard. I asked him whats involved to settle the matter, he said I will have to pay the full debt off , I asked how much , $2500 approximately. umm how come a debt that I had been paying for 3 years increase ?

Well In new Zealand debt collectors don't charge interest but they charge "collection fees "and even these have limits but they can add " legal fees " to the debt. I got in touch with a family accountant who took the matter over for me as I could not be bothered trying to reason with this guy since he is pretty arrogant.

Since I was finishing up with my current job and had 6 weeks holiday pay to be paid out. I offered to pay the whole amount off but he declined and pushed this thought the courts. My thoughts about this is he prefers to keep people in debt and relies on them making mistakes so he can add more " legal fees " to the debt which is kind of unethical.

Now I just wish I could get this paid off without having to pay out thousands to some munter who sits on his ass and uses the court system to do all his too hard work.

so what have I learnt from this ?

1. Well despite westpac's Ad campaign to help people out that are in need , they will rape you when you really need the help.

2. Free Lawyers are pretty crap and are rarely willing to actually help you.

3. If you need a debt collector , get a decent one thats actually going to get the money back as quickly as possible. I would hate to think how much money Westpac has lost using this guy considering I am willing to pay this off and he is the one stringing this out as much as possible to benefit himself and I also hate thinking about the damage he is doing to other families who are struggling.