It's really more the collection agencies (most of whom either work for the Credit Card companies or bought the debt from them) that you need to be careful about. Or anyone with whom you're in an adversarial relationship, really.
In a nutshell, the radio of scumbag collectors to honorable ones is very high.
The scumbag collectors will make all kinds of promises and assurances over the phones in order to get access to your money - and they'll tell you how they have to have electronic access - checks are no good, etc - (but mail em a check and amazingly, they'll cash it).
So say you're behind on a $2,000 debt. You get dozens of calls a week, you get badgered and beaten and emotionally abused. They call you at home, they call you at work, they call you in the morning and at night. They try every trick in the book (most of them illegal but most people don't actually know that) to get you to react emotionally.
FINALLY to get them off your back you agree that they can pull $100 you really don't have but you'll stretch to make work and you give them your bank info and they swear up and down that in 2 days they'll only pull out $100 and you know that when they do you will JUST have enough money left in the bank for your rent to clear and you'll have to wait till next week to eat.
So 2 days pass, and you don't hear from them, so you're relieved, and you think nothing of it, and then 2 MORE days later your landlord calls asking why your check bounced. So now you look at the bank account and they didn't pull $100, they pulled $600, you've bounced 4 checks and been hit by another $120 in fees.
And when you call THEM up, the person who made all those promises about pulling only $100? The one you talked to 5 days a week plus weekends... Well suddenly "they don't work here anymore but we have a record of you authorizing a $600 withdrawal" and they even have a voice recording of you saying, "I approve giving you access to my account" but mysteriously the AMOUNT didn't get recorded.
You should basically assume, when dealing with any debt collector, that they ARE a scumbag - because the odds of them being one are quite high, and you need to be highly on your guard with them.
You do everything in writing and only in writing, no over the phone agreements. You
never ever ever ever give them electronic access to your accounts.
