Relatives

I was never comfortable calling relatives. References that the borrower had willingly put down at one point was uncomfortable enough, but calling other relatives just opened up all sorts of other possibilities of uncomfortable for me.

We find relatives in a couple of ways. One is through a people finding database that lists various relatives and "associates". The other is through guesswork - if the last name is moderately uncommon, then most likely someone with that same last name in the same town is going to be related somehow.

Most of the time the reaction I would get when I called a relative was "Who? Nope, don't know her at all." Occasionally you get a gut feeling that they're lying to you, but there really isn't all that much you can do.

The discomfort levels come from the people who do know the borrower, and are more than willing to share a bit more than I'd like:

"Oh, that's my cousin. Yeah, we don't talk much anymore since she broke into our grandma's house and stole a bunch of money for her drug addiction. Couldn't help you."

"Why's that asshole giving out my number? He never calls unless he needs something - didn't even call me when I had the operation for my bladder cancer. Do you know how painful it is to have to use that bag to piss into? Well, let me tell you..."

"You want who? How did you get this number? He doesn't know this number. Oh shit, now I'm gonna have to change it all over again, you miserable..." *click*

"Now, who are you? What is this about? Well, if I'm going to get her the message, I need to know..." (Disclosure violation waiting to happen. Hang up the phone and run like your job depends on it.)

The truly entertaining relative calls are if they happen to be former in-laws. You either get the complete shut down, or all the information you could ask for. Colleague got a perfect hit on a 30K account hitting a relative who turned out to the be ex-wife who'd just filed suit for back child support and had all sorts of useful information.

And then you get the sob stories about the drug use, the losers, deadbeats, and other assorted dregs of humanity. You hear about the violence ("they finally locked his ass up for beatin' on my sister"), the scam artists ("she cleaned out my bank account years ago - haven't seen her since"), and the people who just wandered off into the sunset ("he's probably under a bridge somewhere drunk, stoned, or dead. Maybe all three.")

And I never got anything useful. At least not in a time frame to make the info something that would benefit me. And that's not even getting into calling non-relatives, which I'll leave that for another post.