‘Zombie debt’ is debt that might as well be back from the grave. Old unpaid debts are often sold by credit card companies (and other lenders) to debt collection agencies for bargain prices — sometimes for as little as 1 to 3 cents for every dollar of debt that is owed. Then these collections agencies go to work, hounding creditors in ways that can be offensive, threatening, and even illegal. Debt collectors purchased as much as $110 billion dollars in delinquent debt in 2015, for prices ranging from 1 to 12 cents per dollar. And in 2015, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission received 66,627 complaints about the practices of third party debt collection agencies for their offensive and underhanded attempts to collect on zombie debt.
