By law, all debt collection calls initiated by a collection agency must be recorded and preserved for three years after the call date. The primary objective is to check if there was a violation of debt collection laws (FDCPA laws), and those recordings can be reviewed if needed.
Say you are a collection agency, and your client (the original creditor) contacts you to say that they have received a complaint from the debtor saying that your debt collector was rude over the phone or felt threatened. Such complaints from debtors can get your client to worry about their reputation. The client may demand that they want to hear the recording of that collection call. The question arises: Is it okay to share that call recording with your client?
In short: In our opinion, a collection agency should avoid sharing debt collection call recordings with their clients for the following reasons.
- This can sometimes become a regular habit for some clients.
- Sharing collection calls with clients may result in privacy/compliance issues. Please explain this to your client, and they will get it. Assure them that you will personally hear that call recording along with your compliance officer and check if indeed there was any violation. Once you hear that recording, you can transcribe it to your client.
- You can also update your client on the collection activity made by your agency so far. This includes if the debtor was skip traced and how often you attempted to reach the debtor.
- If your client insists they want to see collector notes on the online portal to understand how much collection activity is happening in each of their accounts, that is tricky too. Sharing collection notes is usually useless because most debt collectors use short-hand and ambiguous words, which are nearly impossible to understand for average users. These notes can easily be misinterpreted. Convey them that your debt collectors do not get paid unless they collect money on client accounts, so clients should be assured that your collectors are attempting to recover the debt in the best possible manner.
Sharing your internal collection recordings or notes can cause inconvenience to you and raise other unforeseen complications.
However, if your client occasionally wants to know the status of a particular debt, do honor their request. Check with your collections team, and transcribe it for them.
It is fair to assume that 99% of the time, a debtor feels pressured due to the firm nature of collection calls, and there may not be any violation or threats involved, as claimed by your debtor.
But corrective steps should be taken if there is a mistake on the debt collector’s behalf. Tell your client about the incident, and convey to them that appropriate steps have been implemented so that such an incident does not happen again.