Some years ago (about 2004) while operating my debt collection agency in Japan, I had a credit card claim against a Belgian national living in Tokyo for approximately US$30,000. At first when I contacted this individual he was very polite, acknowledged the debt, and clearly showed the will and volition to pay. He mentioned to me that he needed a few days to figure out how to make payments and that he would call me back. I said that’s fine and we arranged to talk at the end of the week.
Well the end of that week came and when I called his mobile phone I got the message that “at the customer’s request the number has been disconnected”. I then called over to his office and was told that he is no longer in Japan. Although I did have his personal email address and attempted on several occasions to contact him, he skipped out on me. Although I had to chalk this claim up to being uncollectible, for some reason I kept his personal email address in my contact list.
A couple of years after that (2007), by accident an email was sent to him when my address book was hijacked by a virus that sent out an email to all of my contacts in that contact list. The email contained a link to a pornographic site that (honestly now) I had nothing to do with. The weird thing is that this Belgian guy received my email, opened it up, went to the link and then sent me an email thanking me for contacting him! Well, I responded that it was nice to hear from him and we started a short exchange of emails. Naturally he was careful not to divulge any information about his location.
But as luck would have it, about a week ago he made a mistake and sent me an email that he intended for someone else which contained his mobile number. Yes, he was back in Belgium and the creditor was still eager to go after him. After forwarding the claim to our Belgian agent, they were able to contact him and talk about the debt. Fortunately, credit card debts are valid in Belgium for up to 10 years. Not sure if they will be able to collect anything but my immediate thought was, “have debt will travel”.
No comments:
Post a Comment