The Early Years

From the W&F 25th anniversary history book 

The original offices were small, housing nine employees in the Business Technology Center by 1988. Gary and Neil interviewed all prospective employees and were very welcoming and encouraging. The partnership purchased its first office building, located on Lakeshore Parkway in Rock Hill’s Tech Park, in 1988. Early employees recall the smoking area at the Lakeshore building as the place to vent and to gossip. The lake was a nice retreat and a great place to walk.

In 1992 there were 16 employees, but telephone extensions were not yet needed since everyone was within a short distance of each other. Bob Perrin joined the company in early 1993, later becoming president in 2001. Talking on the phone then was less complicated because collectors were not aware of many regulations that we needed to follow. They could just say, “Hi, this is E.C. Wells with the firm of Williams & Fudge. We have been asked to represent Elon College in regard to a Perkins loan you had when you attended there. The balance of $$$ has been placed and is due in full.”

Training was on a one-to-one basis. Initially collectors would sit briefly with staff, who informed them of the rules and regulations of the federal loan program. Then they would sit with other collectors, trying to develop their own collection style.

Skip tracing consisted of pulling credit bureau reports manually on a data input machine that looked like a stenographer's typewriter and could only be used by one person at a time. If a typing error was made, one had to start over again. Collectors used manila envelopes as account information holders and wrote the date, time of call, and result of call on the back of the envelope. They used phone books (that Gary “borrowed” from hotels when he traveled) and directory assistance as locating tools. They would also call city libraries and ask them to pull their directories if they had time.

The day began with peak hour calls. Lisa Tillman would get the mail and separate and distribute it to each collector. She had the only computer for a while. Collectors would get payments and locate files, write account numbers on the envelopes, along with collector number and balance of the account, then return them to Lisa for processing of payments.