Commercial collection agencies operate under a different legal framework than consumer agencies, chase debtors who are far easier to find, and charge substantially less to do it. If you have only ever dealt with consumer collections, most of what you know transfers poorly.

Caine and Weiner has been collecting debt since 1930, which makes it older than the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act by nearly half a century. It is also one of the few agencies that runs substantial commercial and consumer operations side by side, and that combination explains a lot about how the company works.

Debt collection contingency fees look simple from the outside: the agency takes a percentage of what it recovers and nothing if it recovers nothing. The complexity sits underneath, in what the percentage applies to, what triggers a higher rate, and which clauses turn a quoted 30 percent into an effective 45. This walks through how the pricing actually works.

Phillips & Cohen Associates is the agency most families encounter at the worst possible time, because its specialty is collecting on the accounts of people who have died. Understanding what the company does, and what a surviving family member is and is not responsible for, matters more here than with almost any other collector.

Most people meet Credence Resource Management through an old phone or cable bill they'd forgotten about. The company is a Texas based collection agency built around telecommunications, utility, and healthcare receivables, and it works accounts at both ends of the delinquency cycle. Here is the full picture, including how to reach the right department when something is wrong.

CBE Group is a 90 year old Iowa collection agency that most people encounter in one of two ways: a healthcare or utility balance, or a letter about unpaid federal taxes. The second one is unusual, because CBE is one of only three private agencies the IRS is authorized to use.