Had a bunch of debt that went to collections like parking tickets and a couple pulled teeth and there’s this whole insurance claim I didn’t square from a car accident where so the way it went down was me and this guy both signal at an unprotected turn and I turn but he doesn’t and so my car’s totaled and he jumps out and has an Instamatic in hand and snaps pictures of the scene and I said how about we get our cars off the street first but he says no he’s waiting for the cops to show and the thing was it was my mom’s car but she’d stopped paying the insurance the month before w/o telling me and so I had no coverage and so I was driving illegally and the guy was sort of sketch and like he’d been waiting for this to happen to trash his beater and at least get some cash out of it more than he’d get for selling it and the guy’s insurance company called me at home trying to get me to pay a couple grand which would have been out my pocket and then also the guy called me at work to intimidate me and at this point I was like 18 years old and I was scared and he said stuff like this can get you into serious trouble and might land you in court if you don’t pay up but I ended up not paying and so that debt went to collections which the way it works is a collection agency buys the debt from the insurance for pennies on the dollar b/c the insurance has little hope of getting their money if you refuse to pay and collections has dubious means of getting at the money like they’ll threaten you and make shit up like for example that they’ll garnish your wages which they can’t b/c it’s illegal and most often if you keep refusing to pay they won’t do much b/c they got tons of these debts bought up and they’ll just move on to someone else who’s less of a hassle or sometimes they’ll drag you to court but the hope is that you won’t show in which case you default and they got the court’s backing in getting at the money but if you do show up and put up any sort of fight that’s more than the bare minimum then they’ll have to pay for an attorney and that’s not worth the money they’d collect off the debt if they won and there’s a couple tricks like you can for example send them a sort of cease & desist letter so they’re not allowed to call you and also any medical debt will show up on your credit history but won’t impact your credit score and after seven years all the debt that tanked your credit score will be wiped off your report and you get a clean slate.