Article Facts

Would you be mortified if someone in a top hat and tuxedo followed you into a restaurant and quietly joined your lunch date? How about three men with more to love dressed like superheroes asking your neighbors for donations to help you in your financial situation?

In Madrid, be sure your bills are paid off or you may be visited by one of these interesting characters. The recession has slammed Spain hard. Official figures show that the unemployment rate has sky rocketed, reaching 19.3 percent. That is one of the highest rates in Europe. Around four million people are not working. That’s the same number of jobless people as France and Italy put together. One business is flourishing however, that business is debt collection.

Spanish law is pretty lax when it comes to debt payment. They allow 95 days to settle bills unlike the 30 in other parts of Europe. This, coupled with the fact that Spanish courts give the matter low priority put collection agencies in high demand.

One company, El Cobrador del Frac – which translates in English as “The Debt Collector in Top Hat and Tails” – boasts more than 250 collectors, and an equal number of investigators and secretaries.Their goal is to work out some deal and retrieve retribution, not to run after people without the means to pay the bill.

For the agency, the new and most popular business is coming from constructive trade which is currently suffering from a huge industry slowdown. Homeowners owe cash to contractors, contractors owe cash to construction companies, construction companies owe equipment makers, and so forth and so on.

Last year, the agency had a wedding company contact them over a couple who did not pay the $83,000 bill for their extravagant wedding. The agency obtained a wedding guest list and began calling up guests one by one on the phone and asking them if they had the chicken or the lobster, and then asked them where to send the bill. Eventually the shamed couple paid up.

These ideas are interesting, (I guess that’s one way to describe it) but they won’t be this effective in due time. In this time of economic hardship too many people have debts and they honestly cannot pay. And to these people, it does not make any difference how much you humiliate them.

Mallory Megan works for a (http://www.rapidrecoverysolution.com) debt collection company. Also she writes articles on business, finance, the credit industry and (http://www.707creditscore.com/rapid-recovery-solutions) collection agencies.