You can legally hire more than one collection agency at a time, provided you do not assign the same account to multiple collection agencies. If one debtor starts getting contacted by different agencies, you can be sued for harassment.
However, hiring more than one collection agency will be very hard to manage. Keeping track of which accounts have been assigned to Collection Agency “A” and others to Collection Agency “B” is always confusing. Then each collection agency has its own way of recovering the debt. Two different client portals training will be required, and each agency will have separate ways and dates when they pay you or raise an invoice. Moreover, whenever a debtor calls you directly to make a payment or discuss something else about his debt, you will have to figure out which collection agency has the account of this debtor. It can be quite confusing.
When does it make sense to hire two collection agencies?
- Transitioning from Agency A to Agency B: You want to fire your existing collection agency “A” ( say you are unsatisfied with their collection results). Meanwhile, you start assigning all new accounts to this collection agency “B”. Eventually, all your accounts to your old collection agency “A” complete their collection lifecycle, and you are left only with the new collection agency “B”.
- You are a large company with multiple offices across US. You also have hundreds or thousands of accounts that require collections every month. You decide to hire collection agency “A” for one set of offices and collection agency “B” for other offices. Both collection agencies will work hard to give you better results since you are such a large account for them. They will always have a fear of losing you.
Overall, we recommend that you hire only one collection agency that is licensed nationally. Do your due diligence to shortlist the best one.