In a meeting attended by repossession industry leaders at a secret location in October 2014, current practices of repossession assignment forwarders was discussed. During this meeting, it was agreed forwarding companies are guilty of unfair and unsafe practices when assigning repossessions to their network of agents.
Mr. McCook, I appreciate your objection to the Anonymous group and also your comments. My question for you is, what is the ARA going to do if it learns of it’s members participating in this act of Collusion & Antitrust? Will this be tolerated and these members be allowed to keep good standing status with the ARA & other trade associations?
According to the ARA Client Protection Bond, Sec: (2), Paragraph (1) which is shown below in it’s entirety, it clearly states that the actions covered are “Dishonest or fraudulent acts with the manifest intent to cause the insured to sustain such a loss… This means that the ARA Member, if “Anonymous” is to Strike, that is a direct violation and will cause such loss to said customer of ARA Member, which in this case is “Primeritus”..
So there again; My question is, How will the Trade Associations rid itself of Dishonest Members who clearly have Premeditated Intent to harm their own Clients?
“2. WHAT ACTIONS ARE COVERED The following actions, causing loss to the Insured, are covered:
(1) Loss of Money, Securities or other property sustained by the Insured, up to the amount of this Bond, resulting directly from one or more fraudulent or dishonest acts committed by any member of the ARA, or an employee of said member, resulting from an assignment by the Insured of a repossession to said member.
Dishonest or fraudulent acts are defined to mean such acts committed by an ARA member, or an employee of said member, with the manifest intent to cause the Insured to sustain such loss and to obtain financial benefit to or for the member of his employee other than the salary, bonus, commission or other benefits or emoluments earned in the normal course of employment and whether acting alone or in collusion with others.”
Such an old issue and because the auto finance churn this type of work out instead of hiring and training in house-forwarding companies remain strong and churn out repossessions taking a piece of the pie and devaluing every role in the repossession after they assign out.
I think the recovery industry intends to build awareness and hope that with continued media content recovery agency owners will be able to afford to turn down this work and continue to be successful. Because that’s just it- just like the bad RDN deals- even though you’re working for less, your working.
To think that this media outlet would even run/post this article is pathetic in itself.
I guess these so called “Anonymous” Repossessors have never heard of collusion or antitrust violations. Not very smart guys! If your agency is ever caught participating in this collusion activity, the chances of your company surviving the backlash and legal action is very slim. Doubt you will even have a company left. Also, I agree with Les’ comment and think your “Anonymous” tag and mask to hide behind proves you are cowards, scared to show professional reasons why you should be paid more per repo. Good day!
I personally find it to be very disturbing that a group of individuals that want to be seen and treated as professionals would choose this image to hide behind. I am not commenting on the actions that they have chosen to take. Everyone has a right to decide whom they work for and for how much money. It is the image that they have chosen that is OBJECTIONABLE!
Given the headlines around the world this week and the use of this mask as a sign of pride for those that choose to loot and burn businesses, our industry cannot be associated with this. We have struggled for years to demonstrate that the repossession industry is not what is portrayed on reality TV, and in one short day we have created an even more destructive image.
Not being an expert on Anonymous, I question the strategy of posting this notice in the first place. It would seem to be much more effective to claim success for the endeavor after the results were known. What is achieved by making the plans known three months in advance? It is clear that the writer understands some of the issues that our industry faces and may even have expressed them well, but to what means in this format? Everyone of us has to wake up and make a decision about how we run our companies. Many will not work for the aggregators, and most of those agencies are doing quite well with that decision.
I fail to understand why anyone would wait one day longer to stop working for someone that did not pay a fair fee to them. Coincidently this week I saw the first results of our “Cost of a Repossession” project that will be unveiled at 2015 NARS by Crabtree, Rowe & Berger. It is a heartbreaking experience to see the numbers when presented by someone that has no skin in the game and understands business to the level that they do.
Why devalue your agency and the industry by adding bogus updates? If the work truly isn’t profitable for the agency dump it or man up and refuse to chase their laundry list of bad addresses? “Anonymous” screams insecurity not unity.
Wow….this is going to be an interesting Spring!