Credit card defaulters to be tracked through job sites
By siliconindia   |   Friday, 09 October 2009, 22:17 IST   |    13 Comments
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Credit card defaulters to be tracked through job sites
Bangalore: The credit card companies and recovery agents are tracking the defaulters through their resumes posted on the job sites, reports Economic Times. Nithin Dutta, a marketing professional in Bangalore had posted his resume on a job site on August 7. He had an outstanding of 6,000 around seven months ago. As he had lost his job, he could not pay his debt. Two days later, two roughnecked recovery agents came at Dutta's home and threatened his wife Mahati of terrible consequences if the couple did not pay their credit card outstandings in one day. Earlier, Dutta had relocated to Dubai, but returned to Bangalore as his wife had got a job. He had then posted his biodata on some job sites along with his new contact numbers and address. "It is not that I did not want to honour the outstanding. But I was not in a position to do that. The thing is, we had just moved to the new address and even our parents and close friends did not know where we were staying. But the credit card recovery agents could locate me there. One of the agents told me that they got my address from a job site," said Dutta. The reductions in the salary and job cut have resultantly increased the number of credit card defaulters in past one year. Ramdas Venkat, who works as a recovery agent on behalf of a credit card company, says banks are frantically looking for genuine information on credit card holders who default intentionally or unintentionally. The job sites are becoming a useful source for such information, especially on younger customers who use such sites extensively. The employers can access Curriculum Vitae (CV) posted on job sites for a certain price. The revenues for viewing the IT resumes in Southern India are over 1 lakh. "We are in the contact content business and we will give access to employers who want to view profiles of candidates," said an official at a job site. These recovery agents use decoy emails too. Another defaulter, Anoop Menon, got a mail saying he won a three day, two night free trip to Malaysia for two people. He called up a number given in the mail. "In 30 minutes, two recovery agents tracked me down to my new office. I guess even telecom companies sell subscriber data," described Menon.