Never Hire a Collection Agency That Charges You Before They Collect Your Overdue Receivables

We thought it was important to speak about this topic to educate so many consumers and businesses that are quick to hire a family friend, colleague or an attorney to assist them in collecting their bad debt. On numerous occasions, we hear at TGA Legal, receive calls to help a business or consumer collect on a judgment that is already been obtained in their favor. We are always happy to assist in collecting on a judgment however it pains us to hear that on most occasions the previous agency billed the creditor thousands of dollars in retainer fees and hourly rate just to give them a judgment on a piece of paper. At TGA Legal billing a client is almost sacrilegious! If a law firm bills their client a retainer fee and/or hourly rate, to file suit against a debtor, and ultimately obtain a judgment in the creditor’s favor, why would they be motivated to collect on the judgment if they have already billed their client all along? To us, this is the telltale sign that the agency that obtained the judgment was never strictly a collection agency altogether. It absolutely pains us to hear how a creditor paid thousands of dollars just to get a judgment before any money was collected whatsoever. We happily collect on outstanding judgments on a regular basis however on numerous occasions we find that the judgment placed in our office for collection was never a collectible judgment from the start. TGA Legal’s CEO, Todd Gieger, recently received a referral from a business that obtained a judgment against a debtor for $80,000. Todd Gieger learned shortly thereafter that the initial law firm had billed this company almost $11,000 to obtain the judgment of which was uncollectible due to an IRS lien, 16 outstanding judgments, a previous bankruptcy, and the owner of this business was incarcerated! Can you imagine? The original law firm sued a debtor without knowing a single thing about the debtor or whether or not it was even collectible from day one!

The message here that we are trying to deliver is the following: why would a collection agency ever sue a debtor without knowing there was a viable asset to collect in the first place? Why? Because that agency doesn’t care so long as they could just bill you all along. Here at TGA Legal, we would never recommend filing suit against a debtor unless we were 100% certain that there was an asset to collect on once judgment is obtained. We perform a full comprehensive background and asset investigation on every single debtor that has been placed in her office for collection. In other words, it’s almost like playing poker against somebody and knowing their cards! We are able to uncover very privileged and sensitive asset information so we can proceed with collecting on a judgment via bank levies, wage garnishments, auto repossessions, personal property, real estate liens, etc.

Please don’t ever use an agency to collect your money unless it is strictly on a contingent basis – we here at TGA Legal are working for free the entire time. We want to collect your money just as bad as you do so we can make our contingent fee…in other words, earn our keep!