Would You Sacrifice Out-of-Stat Debt for Open Cell Phone Privileges?

Published on:
21 September 2011 at 08:33 a.m. ET

Written by: Patrick Lunsford – Editor – insideARM

http://www.insidearm.com/news/00011722-would-you-sacrifice-out-of-stat-debt-for-/

An interesting choice was offered up in a comment thread attached to a recent insideARM.com story.

In the comments for “Obama Proposal Loosens Restrictions on Cell Phone Calls for Debt Collection,” a reader posed the following question: Would the debt collection industry agree to prohibiting collection of out-of-stat debt, in exchange for permission to call cell phones?

Legally, it’s probably a bit of a non-choice, since collection efforts – outside of the courts, of course – are legal for out-of-statute debt, and collectors are currently allowed to call cell phones with permissible purpose so long as auto-dialers aren’t used.

But it does raise an interesting prioritization quandary for the industry. How critical is out-of-stat debt to the success of the industry? And how important is it that cell numbers are treated just as landlines.

So what do you think?

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