EAGLE, Colo. -

In light of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau handing out a $44 million enforcement action against Westlake Financial Services for its debt collection practices, BellesLink founder Paul Kulas offered five reasons why these methods that regulators find to be non-compliant aren’t that successful anyway.

In a blog post published three days ahead of the CFPB announcing its action against Westlake, Kulas pointed out that cell phone pinging and caller ID spoofing — practices he acknowledged were once common in skip-tracing and investigations — are not only drawing the attention of the CFPB but also the Federal Communications Commission.

Besides the possibility of landing in severe regulatory trouble, Kulas noted five other reasons why these practices don’t serve collectors well, including the following:

— When spoofing, you have to keep calling until somebody answers the phone. It wastes your time.

— If you’re on the phone call and the call is dropped, the person can’t call you back.

— If the call is dropped, you can’t call them back. At least not without explaining, one more time, why you’re calling from their Mom’s phone number. So, the lead is burned.

— You can’t leave messages to get a call-back. The caller ID they see on the call-back won’t match the original call, making it suspicious and burning your lead.

— You can’t easily keep track your calls and the work you’ve done. You have to manually track your calls.

Kulas closed by stressing that BellesLink apps offer more “effective” tools for finding people, contacting targets and tracking work.

For more details, visit www.belleslink.com.