Community Exchange

Our primary collection agency recently elected not to renew their licensing in our home state and several other jurisdictions. Consequently, we are currently in the process of identifying a qualified replacement vendor.

For those in the sector, which agencies have you found most effective or would recommend for recovering higher education balances? Conversely, are there any vendors you would suggest avoiding based on your experiences? Any insight would be highly valuable as we conduct our due diligence.

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Elizabeth Ladabouche
Student Accounts and Loan Administrator
Amherst College
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Elizabeth,

We us Key2 Recovery and their brand new website makes it very easy to track every account we've sent them. The dashboard and reporting tools are amazing! I highly recommend this company.

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Angela Bellalta
Student Accounts Manager
Holy Cross College
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Elizabeth,

I have had very good experiences with AR Resources and Eastern Revenue.  They have good customer service with both us and students.  On the other side, I have not had good experience with Windham and Williams & Fudge.  The issue with them is that they do not like working accounts that are over 3 years old.  This hurts when you have to cycle accounts through agencies.  Let me know if you want contact information for the top 2 I mentioned.  Good luck.

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Scott Rosen
Director of Accounts Receivable Operations
Holy Family University
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Hello, Elizabeth,

We work our accounts internally for a couple months after the student is no longer enrolled. After that, we send our first placements to General Revenue Corporation and Williams & Fudge for six months. Second placements are sent to Williams & Fudge and Reliant for one year. We also participate in our state's tax intercept program. We do not send accounts for third placement. The tax intercept sort of is our third placement. 

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Emily Henson
Bursar and Director of Student Business Services
University of Southern Indiana
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Elizabeth,

We have worked with a few agencies over the years, and the ones we have found to be easy to work with and most respectful towards our students are: Conserv, Reliant and Eastern Revenue. We have worked with Conserv the longerst and have never had any issues with them. However, all three have provided good service for us. If you would like contact information just let me know and I would be happy to share. Good luck with your search!

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Christine Fressola
Director of Student Accounts
Drew University
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Elizabeth,

We primarily use Reliant Capital Solutions and have been very happy with their service.  They provide us with an "extended business office" service for three months before transitioning accounts to full collections.  We recently engaged Cedar Financial for international accounts which is their specialty.  They also offer pre-collect services which we are planning to use.

Beth Fetcho

Director, Treasury Operations

University of Delaware

bfetcho@udel.edu

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Beth Fetcho
Director, Treasury Operations
University of Delaware
bfetcho@udel.edu
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We are able to do pre-collect in house. Then we use Williams and Fudge for our full collection. We are having great success with them so far. 

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Lenora Gompert
Accounting Specialist II AR
Western Nebraska Community College
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At Indian River State College, we perform internal collections up to 150-170 days.  At that point, we refer to either Williams & Fudge or Todd, Bremer & Lawson for a 30 day pre-collect effort.  After the 30 days, the accounts automatically roll to full collections if the debt is not resolved.  We leave the first placements for 12 months.  We are very happy with both agencies and have excellent recovery rates from both.

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Rechelle Brown
Director of Student Financials
Indian River State College
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Elizabeth,

We use a 3rd party pre-collect service, ECSI Recovery Select, who works accounts for about 90 days before assigning them to one of our two collections agencies (if they do not agree to a payment plan with ECSI). We do not have enough people in our department to successfully work in-house collections, so this has been a great option for us. ECSI Recovery Select has a wonderful online portal with lots of reporting options. ConServe and Williams and Fudge are the two companies we work with for collections, and we have had decent experiences with both agencies. I think the most difficult part of working with the pre-collect service is that sometimes it seems that the collections agencies do not always reliably communicate with ECSI regarding the status of accounts. 

I hope this is helpful information!

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Shyla Butler
Student Account Specialist
Guilford College
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Elizabeth,

Salt Lake Community College uses Williams & Fudge, ConServe, Todd, Bremer and Lawson and General Revenue Corp for our collection of past due balances. All are great agencies and have done well for us. All have a soul focus on collecting higher education debt.

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David Fawcett
Assistant Bursar, Collections
Salt Lake Community College
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