Grassroots Way To Collect Debt
As A Debt Collection Strategy

by Jack Lindblad
(Chicago, IL)

Well I have been in the debt collection business for a bit of time, being that I run a computer repair business in Chicago that extends credit for computer repair for our low income customers.

Most of our bills are around $20 or so dollars so it is not normally a big problem if someone stiffs us, although with the economy in the gutter, we have been getting A LOT of low income people. So $20 bucks adds up fast! We needed to find a way for people to pay us without being totally mean and we came up with two ways.

One, tell them that we will take a dollar a week if we have to. Since the low income people are really low income, a dollar isn’t going to break them, but it is still a dollar we didn’t have before. Second, we have them sign up for Mturk. This way they can make a couple dollars on top of what they owe us.

We set up the account and password, and then have them do some HITs. When they have enough in their account to pay us we transfer the money to our account. It is their account after they pay us off so they can continue making money for themselves. The second option works about 80 percent of the time. So they work off their debt to us in a way. I hope this gives you a new way to get money from the people that owe you money.

Peace out!