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So what do you do when you don’t owe anything, and lowlife debt collectors still show up at your door or make threatening phone calls? To begin with, if you are completely sure that you don’t owe them anything, you can write to the debt collection agency they represent, and send them a cease-communications letter, asking them to stop harassing you. Debt collectors have to comply, under the law, unless they have proof. The problem is they won’t really tell you who they are; they’ll just keep calling you. Then what you need to do is look up their number on the Internet, or play along, and say you want to cooperate, and asked them for a name or address to turn to.

There is such a thing as a statute of limitations in debt collections. If nobody shows up for years to collect a debt, the debt is considered terminated. They can’t collect it, even if they sue.

The credit cards in our life have gone haywire – they hit us with inexplicable fees, the interest rates are going through the roof, they are cutting our spending limits, and there no rewards either. Even if you haven’t looked closely at your credit card bills these past few months, you can be sure that your credit card deal just got quite grim. If it isn’t obvious yet, this is no longer a buyer’s market. All of this may not really put you in the mood to count your blessings; but whatever raw deal your bank just handed to you, you can be sure that there are people out there with bad credit cards and contracts that make your bank look like Santa Claus. Let’s look at some of these winners.

Let’s start with subprime cards; First Premier Bank’s Centennial Gold card gives bad credit cards a bad name. They charge you nearly $30 to set up an account, they slap on nearly $100 for what they call a program fee, there is an annual fee, and you need to pay a servicing fee that’s about $100 a year too. You actually owe more in all these startups fees than the average credit limit the first month. All this changes with the new credit card law though, starting February. They won’t be able to charge you fees higher than 25% of your credit limit.