There is nothing worse than receiving a phone call from a collections department every twenty minutes throughout the day. You know the feeling when your phone rings, and you know before checking the caller ID who it will be! Many people just stop answering their phone completely, or will go to great lengths to make it difficult for the debt collectors to call them. [ READ MORE ] Next to bankruptcy, having an account in collections is the worst entry you can have on your credit report. It will lower your score, and make it difficult- if not impossible- to obtain new credit. Creditors realize that if you have an account in collections that it went unpaid for a long period of time, and it makes them fear that if they lent you money they would not receive payments on time, either. [ READ MORE ] Debt collectors do not have an indefinite period of time to continue trying to collect payments from old debts.  There is an “expiration date”, called the Statute of Limitations, that prevents debt collectors and/or the original lender, from pursuing you for the rest of your life on old debts. [ READ MORE ]