Consumers Now Driving The Bus With Debt Settlement

Back in 2017 or so, the Ontario government was trying to crack down on debt settlement companies preying on consumers with up front fees and ridiculous promises about making debt magically go away, so they decided to revamp the Collection Act of Ontario to cover debt settlement and retitled it the Collection & Debt Settlement Services Act of Ontario.

The new act put in some reasonable safeguards about maximum fees, notices to consumers, and the ability to get out of a debt settlement contract.  This seems to have solved the problem, as the debt settlement industry has heavily contracted.

But here’s the thing, by making debt settlement companies register as collection agencies, they also made all collection agencies in Ontario debt settlement companies … like magic.

This puts the consumer in charge of driving the bus.  They can hire a collection agency to represent their debts, and negotiate on *their behalf* to make the best arrangements possible for them.  They can ask the collection agency for their advice and inside knowledge on credit reporting, avoiding legal action, settlement parameters by clients, and stopping bad actors in the collection industry that aren’t following the rules.

Now, to my knowledge no collection agencies have really leaned into this … until now.

My company, Kingston Data & Credit, is launching our debt settlement service effective December 1^st  and you can find out more on our Debt Settlement page or from our press release.

We’re going to do this for consumers, for free.  No charge.

Why would we do this?

Well, a couple reasons – first of all, helping consumers is what we try to do when we collect – we strive to collect an overdue account, and handle it in such a way that the consumer is happy with the outcome and goes over to our Google Business Page and leaves us a 5 star review – which over a hundred consumers have done.  It’s a win-win scenario for everyone, and it's the way things should work in the 21st century.  

Secondly it’s easy – our company makes about 20,000 outbound calls, emails, and sms messages every day, answer about 1,500 inbound calls, emails, and SMS each day, take in about 700-1000 payments per day, and disburse funds to about 2200 different clients each month.  Adding on this service and setting up pre-authorized monthly payments from consumers, issuing cheques to creditors or setting up a file for a consumer to help them really doesn’t take us any extra time, and we are built to do it.  

If this goes right, we’ll have dozens of happy consumers each month that asked us to help them, creditors happy that consumers have come to the table to try to resolve their debts, some positive Google Business reviews, and we’ll all feel good about the work we are doing here.

Consumers are now able to drive the bus, and we are going to help them.  I’m excited to see where this will go.

Got questions?  Want to know more about our debt settlement program?  Think we’re crazy?  Feel free to reach out to us.

Thanks kindly,

Blair DeMarco-Wettlaufer
KINGSTON Data & Credit - Consumer Advocacy Program
833-216-6577
debt-advocate@kingtstondc.com