Yet another poorly designed corprate website...



  • My hospital bill was recently tranfered to a collection agency:

    The bill says "I may contact ARstrat at http://arstrat.pataid.com "

     

    WTF #1: No way to contact them through that page.

    WTF #2: Para ver el sitio en Espa &ntilde ol.

    WTF #3: When you try to log in with a WID (WTF-ID ?  :) )   and a last name, it tells you how many tries you have remaining, but if you want more tries, just refresh the window by hitting enter in the URL (but it messes up the colorscheme for some reason).

     

    The fact that the bill was still active was a WTF too, but that's a longer story. 



  • Collection agencies do not exist for the purpose of helping you clear up your bills.

    They exist for the purpose of maximizing their own income by charging you fees and interest.

    Opportunities abound for creative coders.  The longer they can keep you chasing wild geese, the more interest they get.

     



  • @newfweiler said:

    Collection agencies do not exist for the purpose of helping you clear up your bills.

    They exist for the purpose of maximizing their own income by charging you fees and interest.

    Opportunities abound for creative coders.  The longer they can keep you chasing wild geese, the more interest they get.

    <font size="+1">I</font>f you are real nice then they will forget to erase the record of your debt and you will still have a bad credit record.   Endless phone calls will ensue.



  • They pass page formating in the url. I dont even want to understand why they would go with that method.

    https://patient-services.com/logon.asp?logo=arstratLogin.gif&sLogo=arstratLogin.gif&bgclr=ffffff&txtclr=000000&bLanguage=&browser=MIE5.0&SL=

     

    But, Its not arstrat that made the site. It was made and is hosted by pataid. Google 'pataid', they have numerous other sites just as bad.

    The way pataid hosts these sites is just nasty. 

     



  • @newfweiler said:

    Collection agencies do not exist for the purpose of helping you clear up your bills.

    They exist for the purpose of maximizing their own income by charging you fees and interest.

     Eh?  Do you mean "credit card companies" instead of "collection agencies"?  Because collection agencies usually work by buying the debt at a discount, so they do entirely exist for the purpose of having you pay your debt, since that money goes to them.  Anything you pay in fees or interest goes to the original debtor company.
     



  • @Colin McGuigan said:

    @newfweiler said:

    Collection agencies do not exist for the purpose of helping you clear up your bills.

    They exist for the purpose of maximizing their own income by charging you fees and interest.

     Eh?  Do you mean "credit card companies" instead of "collection agencies"?  Because collection agencies usually work by buying the debt at a discount, so they do entirely exist for the purpose of having you pay your debt, since that money goes to them.  Anything you pay in fees or interest goes to the original debtor company.
     

    I'm referring of course to collection agencies that buy the debt outright, all rights included, i.e. the original company writes off the debt entirely when sold and the collection agency charges its own interest.

    There are also arrangements where the collection agency agrees to collect the debt and takes a commission off of any money collected.

    In any case the collection agency wants to maximize its income.  If it needs more cash this year it may put more pressure on you to pay the debt off, but it may on the other hand want to get the most out of you over time.  Your own needs are irrelevant to it.

     


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