[ThrustVectoring]

If you're at all the target audience for this website, you and your entire social circle are soft targets for debt collectors. You have a high credit score and care about it, you have bank accounts and non-retirement investment accounts, you may have home equity in a state that doesn't protect the hell out of it like Texas, etc. If you get sued for $20k and a judgement gets entered, odds are your creditor ends up getting the full $20k. If this isn't you then I apologize for stereotyping, but this does describe a majority of the commentariat here.

A lot of the subjects of these articles are from very different socioeconomic backgrounds and will have a very different experience. Their bank account either doesn't exist or has like a week's pay in it. If they have investments, they're in an untouchable 401(k). They may live in a state that forbids wage garnishment, and even if you get that their wages may already be garnished and immune to further action. You might be able to grab their tax refunds, but those might already be spoken for by other creditors. And to top it all off, bankruptcy court can at any time issue a stay of proceedings and follow it up with a discharge of debts.

In short, there's a reason why most consumer debts are sold on for pennies on the dollar. That's what you actually get from it - maybe you talk some poor sod into paying $20/mo on a $20k debt that you bought for $200. Especially against an intransigent target that rightfully believes the debt to be morally invalid, you can find it extremely difficult to actually collect on a debt.

Anyhow, my point is that attempting to enforce these contract provisions invites PR/legal/political blowback that far outweighs maybe getting a thousand dollars out of the small cohort that actually calls the bluff and makes them make them pay.