Flashback: 1981/82

Collector, Sep 2008 by Rosso, Anne

The early 1980s brought about FDCPA challenges and a new association event

In the early 1980s, ACA International spent a great deal of time working to educate legislators and members of the credit and collection industry about the effects of the relatively new Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), which was enacted in 1977.

At the time, many ACA members believed the Federal Trade Commission's enforcement of the FDCPA was, in some cases, unfair and unreasonable. For instance, a number of small member offices had been forced to spend thousands of dollars to defend themselves against alleged FDCPA violations. ACA Special Counsel Basil Mezines worked with the FTC to convince its staff that small debt collection businesses with a few employees should not be fined the same amounts as huge manufacturing corporations with hundreds of employees.

Later, at ACAs 43rd Annual Convention, held July 13-16, 1982, in New Orleans, the Board of Directors adopted new rules for ACA's FTC Fair Enforcement Fund to ensure it would be readily available to help members fight what the association believed were efforts to enforce some of the FDCPAs legislative provisions unfairly.

Meanwhile, the association continued to conduct FDCPA seminars across the country and aggressively promote its FDCPA compliance manual. In fact, ACA members purchased more than 3,000 manuals during the 1981/82 fiscal year.

Elsewhere on the legislative front, several amendments to the federal bankruptcy law were starting to take effect that many businesses considered anti-credit grantor. These amendments had a major impact on the business community. Many credit unions, for example, reported their charge-offs had doubled as a result of the very liberal provisions of the new Bankruptcy Act amendments. While Congress debated the priority of further changes, ACA presented a position paper reflecting its members' thoughts.

At ACA's 12th National Legislative Conference, held in February 1982, the association announced it was making substantial progress encouraging the federal government to place accounts with ACA members. To further this effort, ACA cosponsored a seminar for collectors and government employees in Washington, D.C., attended by a packed house of more than 200 people.

As many ACA staff members busied themselves with government affairs work, others focused on the hot issue of whether or not credit and collection agencies should embrace computerization. For many months, Collector carried a series of articles on computers, explaining where and how they might fit into the collection business. In only a few more years, the argument over cardless systems versus work cards would be a thing of the past, but during ACAs 1981/82 fiscal year, the debate raged on, and ACA members were divided as to whether or not they should introduce computerized systems into their agencies.

The issue was discussed at a number of member gatherings, including a new meeting introduced in part by 1981/82 ACA President Charles Bartlett. To help improve association and member business practices, Bartlett enthusiastically endorsed the creation of a Committee of 100 meeting, which would provide and promote management training for ACA members. Although only approximately 40 individuals were to be invited, they were carefully selected from both large corporations with multi-office operations and smaller, single-location businesses. The first Committee of 100 meeting was held in Carefree, Ariz., just north of Phoenix. Give-and-take dialogues between members from across the country, plus input from visiting experts, made the meeting a success. Ideas from the meeting were also used to assist ACA's staff and elected leaders as they sought to renew and expand services for all members. The Committee of 100 meeting has evolved over the years but remains an annual event.

In Bartlett's final President's Page column in the July 1982 issue of Collector, he noted, "It is with a twinge of regret that I surrender this exciting, demanding and rewarding job. The year has flown, but the time has come to pass the gavel... Now I look forward to helping on committees and as an instructor. Especially, I look forward to the relative calm of helping to operate our own business and to the fun of watching it develop."

Anne Rosso is associate editor of Collector.