Doing it Wrong: Bill Bartmann-style

Hey, I wonder what our friend Bill Bartmann is up to these days?

When we last caught up with him, he was carnival-barking his Bill of Rights for Ethical Debt Collection. No matter that the list details things already covered under current legislation — the current legislation wasn’t really set up to be turned into a Successories-style poster the way Bartmann’s borrowed list is.

Turns out, Bartmann has been on something he’s calling a “50-state Stop These Criminals” campaign. The campaign is…whatever. He wouldn’t be the first guy to co-opt others’ ideas as his own, and the guy’s got good packaging. Where I need you to spend some time, though, is here:

http://www.stopthesecriminals.com/

Bartmann has a video that’s definitely worth some time deconstructing. Go ahead and press play.

:03-:07 — “This could be the most unusual 3-minute video you’ve ever seen, for two reasons.” Well, one reason is that it’s a 4-minute video (well, 3:49 seconds). The next is coming up.

:08-:14 — “First, I’m the only bill collector in history to be thanked by Mother Theresa for the way I treat people.”This is the second reason — or at least my second reason. Really, Bill? That’s a claim you can float? Of course, what’s working in your favor is the fact that Mother Theresa is dead (taken from us too soon at the tender age of 87 back in 1997) and can’t refute the claim. I don’t have a smoking gun of “Here’s Bill Collecting Tom with his personal tale of being thanked,” but I get the sense that someone like Mother Theresa said thank you to a lot of people in her life.

:15-:24 — “In fact, she gave me this elephant set as a gift to commemorate what she said is the special way that we took care of people the way elephants take care of each other.” He may or may not have gotten that tchotchke from Mother Theresa, just like she may or may not have gotten it from Pier 1 or World Market.

The rest of the video seems a contradiction. Bartmann has a surfeit of dignity and respect for consumers; he just doesn’t have much respect for the collections industry, painting them all as “crooks, thieves, and liars” (:37-:42). He enlists the talents of Dame Judy Dench^* around the 1:10 mark to re-create an alleged phone call (while a dark piano of doom plays an ominous note repeatedly), while Sir Alec Guinness steps in for a profanity-laden racist tirade at 1:31.^**

[^* Editor’s Note: The actress in Bartmann’s clip is not famed English thespian Dame Judy Dench. We apologize for the confusion.]

[^** Editor’s Note: Sir Alec Guinness has been dead for 10 years, which our reporter could know if he’d just, you know– HOW HARD IS IT TO GOOGLE ALEC GUINNESS?!?]

Bartmann, in an ironic twist, is using a lot of fear tactics to bolster the confidence of consumers and perpetuate sort of douchey stereotypes about the collection industry. (My favorite part is Bartmann’s recounting of a debt collector threatening to dig up a body. He then says, “If the consumer had recorded that call with that bill collector…” I.e.: there’s no evidence that call ever happened. “But, the consumer reported that call, so–” And to that, I say: Read this book.)

In his zeal to castigate the industry he’s technically still a part of, he goes too far in the wrong direction to make his point. It’s pandering to the lowest common denominator. It’s doing it wrong.