New platform for fucking with Debt Collectors

http://bukit.co/

by sarahnadav • 12 years ago

26 66 12 years ago

Just launching a new platform, it will probably break if you use it. Try it and tell me how it goes. The Freemium is useless but if you want basic just sign up (with credit card) and I will give it to you free for life...seriously.

midas007• 12 years ago

Love the spirit of it.

sarahnadav35• 12 years ago

thanks! Just trying to create a platform that will help people know their rights and use them. Feedback is greatly appreciated :)

blux• 12 years ago

$25/month and especially $100/month seems a bit steep for people who are so much in debt they have to manage their debt collectors.

sarahnadav35• 12 years ago

I am flexible about the price, I'd love to do it for free... Most people pay about $100 per month to an attorney to do the same thing so I tried to make it affordable.

sarahnadav35• 12 years ago

I am also adding in a "free4ever" coupon. It's just not up yet

Spooky23• 12 years ago

Not necessarily.

Debt isn't just college students and poor folk. Job loss, divorce, health issues, etc can easily put you in a situation where the bills fall behind and you have a cash flow crunch, but you're not destitute.

I had a friend in a situation like this, and managing the various deals (payment arrangements, forgiveness programs, deadlines, etc) was very difficult. Paying $50/mo to manage this stuff would have saved her lots of money in fees and interest.

sarahnadav35• 12 years ago

Thanks Spooky23, I spent a lot of time working with people on one one so I know how much people are paying- and how much money people are losing because they aren't dealing with the issue.

For a lot of people, it's worth it just to have the peace of mind that a collection agency will never call them again.

sarahnadav35• 12 years ago

Spooky23 is also right because we've done a lot of research and most people in debt are 25-44 working, educated, and upwardly mobile (if they weren't being dragged down by debt) usually they got into debt because of job loss or medical crisis.

alanweinkrantz• 12 years ago

I've known the founder since the start and she's the real deal

sarahnadav35• 12 years ago

Thanks Alan!!! Nice to see you here

JonnieCache• 12 years ago

Site looks good, apart from the video on the right, which looks kinda wonky. Maybe it's just the initial frame (can't watch it right now) but it looks kinda WordArt-ish. Also, "join us, we're disrupting" sounds like a job advert, not a product proposition.

I love the idea though, and I wish you the greatest of success.

EDIT: could also do with some kind of tagline in the page title, unless that's not the done thing in SEOland anymore.

sarahnadav35• 12 years ago

Let me know when you watch it- I definitely need a new one. I am working on an instruction video now. Something more personal.

I can add a tagline in the page title. Great suggestion- and I'll ask a friend who does SEO about it

antidaily• 12 years ago

To the founder -- show it off here: http://consumers.creditnet.com/Discussions/forum.php if you havent already.

sarahnadav35• 12 years ago

Haven't yet- will do. It's still kind of rough so I'm trying to get some feedback before I really publicize.

peeters• 12 years ago

I'd love to take a look, but the page isn't being served. Or at least it's taking more than 5 minutes to load. Anyone have an executive summary?

sarahnadav35• 12 years ago

I have an executive summary, where should I send it? try to refresh www.bukit.co . I just checked and it's not loading for me so I am going to go into the servers and check what's going on, it was working a few minutes ago.

spindritf• 12 years ago

Post it here. I'm guessing not only peeters would like to read it.

MacsHeadroom• 12 years ago

send it right here V

jasonsee• 12 years ago

I'm getting nothing but a 503 error.

sarahnadav35• 12 years ago

site crashed from too much traffic, should be up soon

sarahnadav35• 12 years ago

Here it is https://docs.google.com/document/d/1c4STqhM8PxcqNOoAMcjyFnXm...

mathattack• 12 years ago

Maybe f*cking with the debt collectors involves sending them to that page?

sarahnadav35• 12 years ago

Did you read the executive summary? any thoughts...

madcapslaugh• 12 years ago

great idea, im surprised this does not already exist

sarahnadav35• 12 years ago

Mission was to create something that people needed, and should exist.

sarahnadav35• 12 years ago

Never posted here before, how should I upload an executive summary? What is the best way?

sarahnadav35• 12 years ago

hey Everyone! Congrats- the traffic has crashed the site :) I am going into the server now and fixing it

coldcode• 12 years ago

How about screwing with credit bureaus instead? They are an order of magnitude worse than the debt collectors.

sarahnadav35• 12 years ago

IMO, they are going to be screwed anyway. There are MUCH better systems of measuring people's credit worthiness. I looking forward to future tech slaying them completely.

Also, if I am able to fully execute the vision for BUKIT. It will screw with the credit bureaus bonus

sevenminaya• 12 years ago

The site is not working :/ try to fix it because HN is a great opportunity for exposure.

sarahnadav35• 12 years ago

I am on a chat with the Amazon support team to get this back up. It's set to scale to users but not this fast apparently.

sarahnadav35• 12 years ago

Still working on the servers- here is a link to the executive summary https://docs.google.com/document/d/1c4STqhM8PxcqNOoAMcjyFnXm...

k3oni2• 12 years ago

Waiting for it to come back up. HN effect :).

sarahnadav35• 12 years ago

Best.Problem.Ever!!!

k3oni2• 12 years ago

Indeed :). On which type of instance are you running it on?

sarahnadav35• 12 years ago

no longer best problem ever sigh, site still not up

sarahnadav35• 12 years ago

Just in case some of you are wondering who I am- my name is Sarah Nadav, this is my linkedin profile http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=17064747&trk=nav_res...

and my twitter handle is @sarahnadav

jack-r-abbit5• 12 years ago

Perhaps "fucking with debt collectors" is not the best way to phrase this. At first I was left disliking the existence a service that claimed to try to fuck with people (or companies) that are just trying to collect the money they are owed. They are not in the wrong... people in default are. (Even in situations were shit happens and you're behind... the fact remains that you owe someone money and they aim to collect it.) But it seems the service is meant to help both sides.

EDIT: I also understand the collectors can be very invasive and annoying. But think about how you would be if someone owed you $5k. Would you just ping them once a month or would you be a little bit in their face trying to get your money?

sarahnadav35• 12 years ago

The service is meant to help both sides- the creditors and the people in debt, but the collection agencies are just guns for hire and VERY abusive.

So my goal is to try and take them out, but it is ultimately to everyone's benefit.

jfrisby6• 12 years ago

... except the collection agencies -- but good riddance to them.

sarahnadav35• 12 years ago

Just saw your edit- and the reality is that when people don't have money, or intend to jack someone, chasing after them usually doesn't work. that said, I do feel for people who get stiffed.

But for my company, it is not really addressing loans or debts between people on a small scale but a trillion dollar defaulted debt market where large funds buy debt and then hire agencies to collect. For the funds, its not about what was owed, it is about return on investment.

jack-r-abbit5• 12 years ago

Companies buy and sell debt a lot. Defaulted debt is still debt. It is a riskier buy and probably comes at a discount. But it is still one company paying another company and assuming the debt collection process. In the case of my mortgages that have been sold numerous times, there is little (or no) risk to the buyer since the payment history is sound and the account is in good standing. They don't need to harass me. They just send me a nice letter telling me where to direct my payment going forward. For defaulted debt, of course there is a risk. They are dealing with people that have already shown they are not [able|willing] to pay. But I don't see any difference between the company that bought my mortgage and the company that bought my neighbor's defaulted mortgage[1]. Although the one might have to get a little more aggressive to get my neighbor to pay up. None of this changes the reality that my neighbor owes money to someone who wants very badly to collect it.

[1] I'll admit that mortgages probably are not handled in the same way as other debt but that was the only high $$ debt I could think of... and it sounds like we're not talking about skipping out on a $100 cable bill here. Perhaps we're talking more about charging $20k on a Visa and then not paying. Feel free to substitute any other example where one person pays their debt and the other does not.

jessaustin• 12 years ago

I've been on both sides, but on balance I'd say I have relatively little sympathy for industries that (a) consider "product innovation" to consist mostly of designing contracts that will trick consumers and (b) regularly lobby to change the rules governing bankruptcy, financial procedures, bank transfers, fees, etc. There are multiple industries that may be so described. Perhaps someday software will eat the world, but finance already has.

sarahnadav35• 12 years ago

not to be cliche, but its just a system and it can be disrupted.

jfrisby6• 12 years ago

I've faced two situations involving collectors: In one, I had forgotten to pay a bill in a timely manner. In the other, the bill was BS and the former landlord who sent it to collections was breaking a number of related laws (such as double-dipping).

In both cases, the default behavior of the debt collectors was to... break the law. The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act exists for a reason and its only peoples' ignorance of it that allows the grotesque tactics they employ to continue unabated.

(BTW: The $100 bill I forgot about? I promptly paid it once I was reminded of it. The $5,300 the landlord claimed I owed? That went away the moment I pointed out I had proof of their malfeasance.)

"Just doing their jobs" is not an excuse for bad behavior, ever.

jack-r-abbit5• 12 years ago

Of course. Anyone violating The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act should be punished. Also, anyone who owes someone money should pay it. If there is a dispute over the validity of a debt, there is a provision in The FDCP Act to handle that. Everyone should be held to the rules equally.

sarahnadav35• 12 years ago

Sorry everyone, site is still down. I'll go for the cliche and try and turn this crisis into opportunity...

My situation is this- I live in Israel and my programmer who built the site is in the Army and unreachable. I've been coding but I really just have skills that are "programmer adjacent."

I need to build my tech team so if this excites you and you have skills- (site is built in node.js and hosted on Amazon) please contact me through the email address in the executive summary.

sarahnadav35• 12 years ago

In case you are wondering why we crashed- it turns out that YESTERDAY Amazon changed their policy on npms and they no longer support self signed certificates. FML, but hopefully this might help other people avoid a crash

http://blog.npmjs.org/post/78085451721/npms-self-signed-cert...

scott_karana• 12 years ago

Apparently there's a workaround:

http://blog.npmjs.org/post/78085451721/npms-self-signed-cert...

sarahnadav35• 12 years ago

I already checked that and it won't work for my platform but I am sure there will be a workaround soon.

sarahnadav35• 12 years ago

The patch was fixed with Amazon and www.bukit.co is up and running. I look forward to your feedback.

sarahnadav35• 12 years ago

Problem is fixed and site is back up http://bukit.co/

osamet672• 12 years ago

I don't get it - consumers pay you to send a cease and desist letter for them?

sarahnadav35• 12 years ago

Just FYI- everything is back up except the SSL certificate so be aware. Should be fixed soon.