Unethical Life Pro Tips

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An Unethical Life Pro Tip (or ULPT) is a tip that improves your life in a meaningful way, perhaps at the expense of others and/or with questionable legality. Share your best tips you've picked up throughout your life, and learn from others!

ULPT Rules:

Tips must be unethical, tips that are ethical will be removed.
Tips must provide some benefit to you.
Post titles must begin with "ULPT" or "ULPT Request", and should be descriptive. The title should explain the gist of the ULPT without needing a description. Post that are walls of text will be deleted at the mods discretion.
No tips about rape, murder, suicide, or any tips that violate Geneva Convention laws.
No tip lists, each individual post should be about a single tip. This includes links to articles that list tips.

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Is a debt collector texting you? Don't block the text number. Reply. (self.unethicallifeprotips)

submitted 1 month ago by Jollyllama to c/unethicallifeprotips

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Debt collectors pay to send you SMS messages, around $.003-$.01 it doesn't sound like alot but trust me it adds up. They pay the same rate for incoming SMS and even more for MMS. So this holiday season, instead of blocking why not sign their numbers up for every spam SMS under the sun?

Happy Holidays!

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (2 children)

If you owe money, you are obligated to pay it back. Running away from it will make things worse. What you can do is offer them $1, stating that you can't afford to pay anything more. They MUST accept an attempted payment (in the US). They will demand more, but if you stick to it, they will accept your payment.

That being said, there are some debts that can be immorally large. Medical debt and college debt are made with imaginary numbers.

However, once you have it, it never goes away.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

If I recall, there are instances where this is not good advice as paying anything, even $1, resets time limits and confirms a debt.

I've had a incorrect bill sent to a debt collector simply because the fix took longer than the billing system allowed and sent outstanding balances to collections automatically.

Another friend had a zombie debt, one that had been dismissed, pop up again and paying anything would restart the clock.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Then I would say, YMMV. I haven't had much experience with debt collectors, but in my case, I owed.

[–] Jollyllama 1 points 1 month ago

This is bad advice and assumes the collection agency is not an absolute piece of shit. Often you can get very low settlements out of the scummy collectors but in my experience many of the debts they harass people over are paid off, settled or otherwise non collectible. "That's illegal" they really don't care and will try their hardest to convince you that you still owe them money until you pay or take legal action.