Suffered from "beheading interest", borrowed 5,000 yuan, the actual arrival of 4,500 yuan; forced to high interest, borrowing a year to repay 13,000 yuan, less than two years to repay 23,000 yuan ... Zhang Yang (pseudonym), who lives in Shili fort in Beijing's Chaoyang District, is caught in the quagmire of online lending.
Collected phone calls, text messages, and verbal threats. What bothered Zhang Yang the most was that everyone in his mobile phone address book received a collection call and learned that his "debts were not repaid". "This lethality is too great, there is no face to see." He said.
Recently, a reporter from the Rule of Law Daily investigated the chaos of online lending and found that behind it is a gray industrial chain of collection - under the background of the normalization of anti-gang crime and evil, blatant violent collection is difficult to see, but the high-frequency bombing of telephones and text messages regardless of time, and even the collection behavior that affects the address book, is becoming more and more common.
"Everyone in the address book knows I owe money!" Mr. Gao from Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province, said with chagrin. Last year, due to the dismal business of the store he operated, he could not repay the online loan on time, so he took the initiative to contact the online loan platform to hope to postpone the repayment, but the other party did not agree.
A month later, the collectors began to collect from him frequently through phone calls and text messages. Mr. Gao proposed that his wife would undergo surgery, hoping not to harass her, and was refused. His emergency contacts, all the people in his address book, received a collection call. Mr. Gao said that he and his relatives and friends were verbally threatened and intimidated by the collectors.
This had a huge impact on his life. "Some friends broke off contact with me after they learned that I borrowed money from the Internet, and many colleagues looked at me differently and didn't even want to dine with me. My wife eventually divorced me because she couldn't bear the pressure. Mr. Gao said.
Mr. Zhang of Dongguan, Guangdong Province, has a similar situation. He could not repay the 50,000 yuan online loan in time, and every morning, middle and evening he could receive collection calls and threatening text messages, and the personnel in the address book were sent by the group to ask for assistance in collection. In the end, Mr. Zhang asked others to help communicate with him, and reached a repayment agreement with the platform that was deferred for two years, and the collection behavior was suspended.
So, how did the collector get the borrower's address book? Why are collection behaviors so similar?
According to the respondents, when they register various online lending platforms and apply for loans, the platform requires them to obtain the user's mobile phone address book information, otherwise the loan process cannot continue. The collection calls and text messages received by borrowers are often not from online lending platforms, but from specialized collection companies - many online lending platforms outsource their collection business to collection companies.
Mr. Zheng from Sichuan, who worked part-time at a collection company for a while, briefed reporters on what he knew about the collection process.
After the simple induction training, Mr. Zheng was arranged to go to the workstation and make phone calls and send text messages according to the collection list provided by the "black" (company management and supervision personnel). The list contains information such as the borrower's identity card number, home address, work unit, etc., as well as address book details.
"According to the training program, I first call the borrowers on the list, first identify the identity of the other party, and then indicate my intentions. If the borrower does not have a clear willingness to repay, we will read it to him according to the personal information and home address provided on the list, and tell him that if he does not repay the money, he will face door-to-door collection and credit damage. Mr. Zheng said that the collectors would use some threatening words in due course.
When a series of collection methods are used up and the collection is not successful, Mr. Zheng records the borrower's situation on the collection slip, makes a mark and gives it to the "black", and the "black" is handed over to the next department to be responsible.
For the above collection behavior, Liu Deliang, director of the Asia-Pacific Network Law Research Center and professor of the Law School of Beijing Normal University, believes that online lending platforms and collection companies should take legal ways to collect without affecting the normal work and life of borrowers and their relatives, such as by sending lawyer letters, telephone notices at normal times, and emails to inform them of the need to repay debts.
"There is a debt relationship between the borrower and the online lending platform, but the infringement of the legitimate rights and interests of the borrower by the online lending platform through threats and intimidation is an infringement, and the serious circumstances can constitute a violation of the law and crime." Liu Deliang said that violent collection is not advisable.
In the view of Long Fei, a senior adviser at Beijing Zhiren Law Firm, collecting by harassing the borrower's family and friends in the address book is obviously a misconduct, and his family and friends are not debtors, frequent harassment interferes with the normal work and life of others, and is suspected of constituting public security violations, and can be punished with detention and fines. If you encounter violent collection, you should promptly report the case to the public security organs.
"The Civil Code stipulates that natural persons enjoy the right to privacy, and no organization or individual may infringe on the privacy rights of others by means of spying, intrusion, leakage, disclosure, etc." Meng Qiang, a professor at the Law School of Beijing Institute of Technology, said that if the collector verbally threatens the borrower, or even coerces, tracks, and exposes personal information, it is suspected of infringing on the borrower's personality rights, and the borrower can choose to call the police, sue and other ways to protect their rights and interests.
For the outsourcing of collection business by some online lending companies, Long Fei believes that the online lending platform needs to do a good job in collection management to ensure that collection is carried out under the premise of legal compliance, and once it is found that the cooperative institution has violent collection and other violations of laws and regulations, it should immediately terminate the cooperation and hand over the clues of violations of laws and regulations to the relevant departments.
"In a debt relationship, collecting debts through legal forms such as lawyer letters, arbitration, and litigation is the correct collection method that online lending platforms should choose." Liu Deliang said.
Column Editor-in-Chief: Qin Hong Text Editor: Fang Ying Title Image Source: Figureworm Creative Image Editor: Yong Kai
Source: Author: Rule of Law Daily, Han Dandong et al
![The police smashed 21 malicious harassment platforms such as "Thunder" and "Mad Dog SMS"[fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)