Experts warn that the number of citizens whose utility debts are being collected by debt collectors may soon double

Collectors intend to collect from Russian citizens about 20 billion rubles in debts for housing and communal services in 2017 - professional collectors are currently working on 3% of the total debt of the population for housing and communal services, Izvestia reports, citing data from the Sequoia Credit Consolidation company.

The total debt of the population for communal services, as the Ministry of Construction recently clarified , today amounts to 645 billion rubles. “Residents are generally very disciplined in paying for housing and communal services. Among them, only 6% have debts for housing and communal services. However, recently this figure has worsened; previously there were 4% of non-payers among the population,” the Minister of Construction and Housing said in July. public utilities of the Russian Federation Mikhail Men.

As Sergei Shpeter, general director of the YuVS agency, clarified, management companies, as a rule, transfer overdue housing and communal services payments to collectors for a period of two to three years. The expert noted that the efficiency of collecting such debts at the pre-trial stage is in the range of 5-10%, at the judicial stage - 15-20%. According to Shpeter's forecasts, in three years the work of professional collectors will account for 5-6% of Russians' debt for utility bills.

Let us remind you that on January 1, 2017, a law introducing new rules for collectors came into force. By law, collectors are required to record any contact with the debtor: oral and telephone conversations must be recorded. And all recordings of negotiations, as well as letters and even SMS, must be stored for at least three years. Each collection agency must have equipment that allows it to store all such information for the required period.

In addition, debtors are no longer obliged to endure the annoying harassment of debt collectors. If the dialogue does not work out, and the collector gets on your nerves, the citizen has the right to write a statement and refuse to communicate or redirect the collectors to his official representative, for example, a lawyer. Federal Bailiff Service
(FSSP), which since this year has become the regulator of the debt collection market,
approved the forms of the relevant documents. As the FSSP recently reported, since the beginning of the year it has received more than 5 thousand complaints against debt collectors and fined them 2.5 million rubles.