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Girl Scouts Lean On Cookie Deadbeats To Pay Up

(CBS) -- The Girl Scouts in the Chicago area -- and across the country -- are dealing with "cookie debt" -- money they were expecting from cookie sales that hasn't come in.

Girl Scouts here have a cookie debt of about $65,000.

That is $65,000 the girls were expecting to have from cookie sales but don't, says L'Oreal Payton, spokeswoman for the Girl Scouts of Greater Chicago and Northwest Indiana.

"We do everything in our power to collect what's owed from those individuals. After placing calls to the troop leaders and parents who have yet to pay for their cookies, the issue is then transferred to a collections agency," she says.

And Payton says the Girl Scouts are hoping the collections agency will get back about a third of their "cookie debt." This year, that would be about $22,000.

Cookie debt happens when people decide they don't want the boxes they order or when a troop orders more boxes than they can sell.

The collections agencies can go after the troop leaders and the parents, says Patty Fay, vice president of administration for the Girl Scouts of Greater Chicago and Northwest Indiana.

Payton says the debt has been getting smaller since the Girl Scouts started using a collections agency a few years ago.

Last year the cookie debt was $75,000.

 

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