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I worked in the collections industry for a while. It was my first programming job. I don't understand debtors that don't want to get calls letting them know wh

I worked in the collections industry for a while. It was my first programming job. I don't understand debtors that don't want to get calls letting them know what is happening. I get it in the sense that they didn't pay their bills and they've chosen denial as their plan for dealing with it but I don't get why anyone else would want to validate that kind of behavior. But if that is the route they want to go the FCDPA clearly states that they can force the debt collector to cease communication for the most part and the avenues that remain open are via written mail. I understand that sometimes an old number or something might be called in error but that has be a pretty rare thing and something easy to deal with on the receiving end. I think the best way to avoid robocalls from debt collectors is to not let your debt go into collections.

Eldarrion 11y ago
That really depends on the situation and the debt collector company in question. My phone is on the do-not-call list, and I have never defaulted on a debt. My phone number has also been mine for eight years now. Two years back, I was getting somewhere along the lines of ten-fifteen calls a day about a debt under a completely different name. They were all robocalls that didn't give the option to stop them contacting me, and repeated calls from me to their company, asking that they cease the harassment and that the person they're calling hasn't used that phone number for at least six years resulted in a lot of "Yeah, okay, we'll stop" only for the frustration and annoyance to continue. In the end, I spent somewhere along the lines of three hours of my time in a single day to get in touch with a high-up enough person that could actually take action and stop the calls. This does not include the numerous previous times I called the company and asked my phone number to be removed from their list, or the amount of frustration the numerous daily calls caused. From what I understand, debt collector agencies tend to be on the shadier side. Not saying there aren't companies that actually handle matters the way they're supposed to, I'm sure they are, but from what I've seen they're the minority. There was even a case where an agency had decided that I had a debt (Amusingly, the amount there was $8.95) and went as far as contacting my grandmother in another country and threatening her that they'd take her house away if she didn't contact me and make me pay the debt I owed them. I've also heard of stories where parents/relatives of friends were contacted and passively threatened with remarks like "We know where you live". So no, free reign to make robocalls isn't a good thing in my opinion. If anything, companies that make those illegally/after being asked to cease should be getting punished instead.
fweespeech 11y ago
> I understand that sometimes an old number or something might be called in error but that has be a pretty rare thing and something easy to deal with on the receiving end. > I think the best way to avoid robocalls from debt collectors is to not let your debt go into collections. Your statement isn't true in many cases. I've got two "debts" that debt collectors keep trying to collect. One for ~15 years and one for ~6 years. The reason for the quotes? Neither of these debts are mine. I was a minor and someone at the hospital assigned something to the wrong patient. I hadn't gone into that hospital that entire year, the previous year, or the preceding year. Yet, they keep trying to collect from a 15 year old kid who only went to that hospital once when he was 11. I somehow doubt they forgot to bill my parents for 4 years. This is the date on the actual documentation, so its not like my parents ignored it for 4 years and I was unaware. 1) The hospital refused to admit fault and could provide 0 evidence I was actually there when it happened. 2) Years later it went to collections, and I was 17. They robocalled and threatened me with jail time and a bunch of other shit. I told them I could prove I wasn't even in the state of California [which was true, I was visiting family on the date I was supposedly at the Hospital ... on the other side of the country ]. Proof was provided. 3) They've since sold this debt several times, and this year, I still get some debt collector calling me. I call them up and point out I can still prove it was physically impossible that I was in the hospital on the date I supposedly incurred this debt. --------- The "other debt" is a parking ticket on a car I can prove I haven't owned for years [ I have both insurance and DMV paperwork showing I sold the car years before this ticket happened ], in a city I've never been to, on a date I can prove I was [literally] a thousand miles away at a gas station within an hour of the date/time stamp on the ticket. Guess what happened? 1) They sent mail to the wrong address [ literally 5+ years old ]. 2) They falsely claimed I owned the car at the time and convinced the state tax board to hold my refund when I failed to respond to this "notification". 3) The man on the other end of the phone when I called was abusive, called me a liar, and insisted that I owned the car. He intentionally gave the wrong address verbally to mail documentation proof too. The information he gave didn't match their site at all. When he insisted he didn't get any of the mail I sent him after a couple of months and I must have "sent it to the wrong address", I moved on to the next step. 4) I had to get a lawyer and take the "debt collector" to court in order to get my money back + legal fees. The moment he was notified I filed, I got a phone call saying there was "No need. He found the clerical error and was correcting it." and cut a check for ~$4000 that I got about 48 hours later via overnight mail. 5) Despite the fact this asshole knew he was trying to collect from the wrong person at this point, guess what? He sold it some other schmuck who tried to pull the same shit a couple years later. The only difference was he couldn't get my tax refund hell and just resorted to calling me. --------- Now, maybe, I just have exceptional bad luck and I'm just extremely hard to find. I doubt this somehow. > But if that is the route they want to go the FCDPA clearly states that they can force the debt collector to cease communication for the most part and the avenues that remain open are via written mail. Yeah, every time I do that, they sell it to another debt collector who then calls to "notify me about my debt". I get these same two calls every year.
hga 11y ago
Echoing others, you may not have any choice in this. Back in 2007 Certegy had a terrible data breach, an employee, sysadmin or dbadmin, sold info on 3 million people (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certegy#Consumer_information_compromised https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certegy#Consumer_information_c...). Not all that long after that, pretty clearly based on information gained from Certegy or some other compromise of my most basic checking account information---but bizarrely, not necessarily my name? Something was very wrong in the set of info---a debt collector claimed I'd charged hundreds of dollars to on-line porn sites to my checking account. Which of course is particularly bizarre, because if it was real, why hadn't they just debited my account in the first place? So, no debt, but it went into collections, and they didn't give up for more than a year. Can't remember why they gave up, other than that they pretty clearly knew the case was weak, assuming the whole thing wasn't a scam to begin with.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  If your information was compromised, its at least possible that whoever was not a debt collector, but posing as one supposedly collecting a debt associated with embarrassing info (that people wouldn't want to be associated with if there was an escalation to a lawsuit) so that they could extort money from you.
s73v3r 11y ago
"I get it in the sense that they didn't pay their bills and they've chosen denial as their plan for dealing with it but I don't get why anyone else would want to validate that kind of behavior." Because debt collectors are assholes. They lie and harass not only the person in debt, but their friends and families. I support every measure to hamper them in doing business.
vitd 11y ago
The "called in error" rate is not pretty rare. It's quite high in my experience. There are a number of reasons: 1) People who owe money often put fake phone numbers on forms so they can't be contacted. They will sometimes randomly choose your number. 2) Debt collectors don't believe you when you say, "There's nobody here by that name. You have the wrong number," because that's what people who owe them money try to say. I had this happen to me when I moved into a new apartment and got a new phone number. I told them 3 or 4 times that the person they were looking for was not at this number. I even told them that I had recently moved and was just assigned the number. They literally said, "Yeah, right." So I called the police. They filed a telephone harassment report for me. I then sent the report to the phone company who set up a tap for me. Whenever the debt collectors would call, I would wait until the call ended, dial a special number and it would figure out what number called me (even if they turned on caller-ID blocking), and note it in a file. After 3 or 4 times, they sent it to the police who contacted the debt collectors and told them to stop harassing me or they'd face criminal charges. It shouldn't have to come to this for innocent people, but this is by no means an isolated or rare incident. Every person I know has had these types of calls, with differing amounts of success at getting rid of them.
bcoates 11y ago
Because once a debt has been turned over to a collections agency it is not in your interest to pay it. The window of opportunity to not have a credit strike has closed. Paying the bill will not improve your credit. The counterparty has already written off the debt, if suing was a credible option they wouldn't have sold it to collections. They harass because it's their only recourse. It's a mistake to communicate with collections regardless of the legitimacy of the debt.
fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
>I understand that sometimes an old number or something might be called in error but that has be a pretty rare thing I hope you're starting to get the impression that errors are not as rare as you believed they were this morning. I know I have received all manner of erroneous debt collection calls (looking for relatives, looking for people I've never heard of, etc). > and something easy to deal with on the receiving end. Obviously, it isn't. > I think the best way to avoid robocalls from debt collectors is to not let your debt go into collections. If anyone deserves to have their phone bill crammed, it's people who say things like that. I had mine crammed when I was in college & couldn't/wouldn't pay the several hundred dollars in extra charges; it followed me around for years. BTW, if anyone is a Sprint or Verizon customer since 2010 and has had their bill crammed, there has been a huge fine, & websites set up to pay restitution. https://www.fcc.gov/guides/cramming-unauthorized-misleading-or-deceptive-charges-placed-your-telephone-bill https://www.fcc.gov/guides/cramming-unauthorized-misleading-...
dragonwriter 11y ago
> But if that is the route they want to go the FCDPA clearly states that they can force the debt collector to cease communication for the most part and the avenues that remain open are via written mail. Most people aren't aware of the FDCPA and its not clear that debt collectors are all that compliant with it. In any case, the FDCPA only requires collectors to stop contact when they have received a written request from the debtor. > I understand that sometimes an old number or something might be called in error but that has be a pretty rare thing and something easy to deal with on the receiving end. Inaccurate numbers getting called (and not just "old numbers that were once valid for the debtor") isn't (AFAICT, from direct experience) a particularly rare thing, nor will debt collectors stop calling when they reach an inaccurate number (nor will they accept a request to stop calling at that number.) > I think the best way to avoid robocalls from debt collectors is to not let your debt go into collections. Sure, if by "your" you mean "no one who has ever been, either through intentional misrepresentation to avoid contact by debt collectors, or by past use, or for any other reason, had their account associated with your phone number".
jasonlotito 11y ago
I've been getting calls for 4 years from debt collectors for someone else. Not for my debt, but for someone else's debt and legal troubles. So when telling them to stop calling me hasn't worked, what can I do? It's 4 years now, and anyone calling for the old person at this point is being negligent.

Eldarrion 11y ago

That really depends on the situation and the debt collector company in question. My phone is on the do-not-call list, and I have never defaulted on a debt. My phone number has also been mine for eight years now. Two years back, I was getting somewhere along the lines of ten-fifteen calls a day about a debt under a completely different name. They were all robocalls that didn't give the option to stop them contacting me, and repeated calls from me to their company, asking that they cease the harassment and that the person they're calling hasn't used that phone number for at least six years resulted in a lot of "Yeah, okay, we'll stop" only for the frustration and annoyance to continue. In the end, I spent somewhere along the lines of three hours of my time in a single day to get in touch with a high-up enough person that could actually take action and stop the calls. This does not include the numerous previous times I called the company and asked my phone number to be removed from their list, or the amount of frustration the numerous daily calls caused. From what I understand, debt collector agencies tend to be on the shadier side. Not saying there aren't companies that actually handle matters the way they're supposed to, I'm sure they are, but from what I've seen they're the minority. There was even a case where an agency had decided that I had a debt (Amusingly, the amount there was $8.95) and went as far as contacting my grandmother in another country and threatening her that they'd take her house away if she didn't contact me and make me pay the debt I owed them. I've also heard of stories where parents/relatives of friends were contacted and passively threatened with remarks like "We know where you live". So no, free reign to make robocalls isn't a good thing in my opinion. If anything, companies that make those illegally/after being asked to cease should be getting punished instead.

fweespeech 11y ago

> I understand that sometimes an old number or something might be called in error but that has be a pretty rare thing and something easy to deal with on the receiving end. > I think the best way to avoid robocalls from debt collectors is to not let your debt go into collections. Your statement isn't true in many cases. I've got two "debts" that debt collectors keep trying to collect. One for ~15 years and one for ~6 years. The reason for the quotes? Neither of these debts are mine. I was a minor and someone at the hospital assigned something to the wrong patient. I hadn't gone into that hospital that entire year, the previous year, or the preceding year. Yet, they keep trying to collect from a 15 year old kid who only went to that hospital once when he was 11. I somehow doubt they forgot to bill my parents for 4 years. This is the date on the actual documentation, so its not like my parents ignored it for 4 years and I was unaware. 1) The hospital refused to admit fault and could provide 0 evidence I was actually there when it happened. 2) Years later it went to collections, and I was 17. They robocalled and threatened me with jail time and a bunch of other shit. I told them I could prove I wasn't even in the state of California [which was true, I was visiting family on the date I was supposedly at the Hospital ... on the other side of the country ]. Proof was provided. 3) They've since sold this debt several times, and this year, I still get some debt collector calling me. I call them up and point out I can still prove it was physically impossible that I was in the hospital on the date I supposedly incurred this debt. --------- The "other debt" is a parking ticket on a car I can prove I haven't owned for years [ I have both insurance and DMV paperwork showing I sold the car years before this ticket happened ], in a city I've never been to, on a date I can prove I was [literally] a thousand miles away at a gas station within an hour of the date/time stamp on the ticket. Guess what happened? 1) They sent mail to the wrong address [ literally 5+ years old ]. 2) They falsely claimed I owned the car at the time and convinced the state tax board to hold my refund when I failed to respond to this "notification". 3) The man on the other end of the phone when I called was abusive, called me a liar, and insisted that I owned the car. He intentionally gave the wrong address verbally to mail documentation proof too. The information he gave didn't match their site at all. When he insisted he didn't get any of the mail I sent him after a couple of months and I must have "sent it to the wrong address", I moved on to the next step. 4) I had to get a lawyer and take the "debt collector" to court in order to get my money back + legal fees. The moment he was notified I filed, I got a phone call saying there was "No need. He found the clerical error and was correcting it." and cut a check for ~$4000 that I got about 48 hours later via overnight mail. 5) Despite the fact this asshole knew he was trying to collect from the wrong person at this point, guess what? He sold it some other schmuck who tried to pull the same shit a couple years later. The only difference was he couldn't get my tax refund hell and just resorted to calling me. --------- Now, maybe, I just have exceptional bad luck and I'm just extremely hard to find. I doubt this somehow. > But if that is the route they want to go the FCDPA clearly states that they can force the debt collector to cease communication for the most part and the avenues that remain open are via written mail. Yeah, every time I do that, they sell it to another debt collector who then calls to "notify me about my debt". I get these same two calls every year.

hga 11y ago

Echoing others, you may not have any choice in this. Back in 2007 Certegy had a terrible data breach, an employee, sysadmin or dbadmin, sold info on 3 million people (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certegy#Consumer_information_compromised https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certegy#Consumer_information_c...). Not all that long after that, pretty clearly based on information gained from Certegy or some other compromise of my most basic checking account information---but bizarrely, not necessarily my name? Something was very wrong in the set of info---a debt collector claimed I'd charged hundreds of dollars to on-line porn sites to my checking account. Which of course is particularly bizarre, because if it was real, why hadn't they just debited my account in the first place? So, no debt, but it went into collections, and they didn't give up for more than a year. Can't remember why they gave up, other than that they pretty clearly knew the case was weak, assuming the whole thing wasn't a scam to begin with.

dragonwriter 11y ago
If your information was compromised, its at least possible that whoever was not a debt collector, but posing as one supposedly collecting a debt associated with embarrassing info (that people wouldn't want to be associated with if there was an escalation to a lawsuit) so that they could extort money from you.

s73v3r 11y ago

"I get it in the sense that they didn't pay their bills and they've chosen denial as their plan for dealing with it but I don't get why anyone else would want to validate that kind of behavior." Because debt collectors are assholes. They lie and harass not only the person in debt, but their friends and families. I support every measure to hamper them in doing business.

vitd 11y ago

The "called in error" rate is not pretty rare. It's quite high in my experience. There are a number of reasons: 1) People who owe money often put fake phone numbers on forms so they can't be contacted. They will sometimes randomly choose your number. 2) Debt collectors don't believe you when you say, "There's nobody here by that name. You have the wrong number," because that's what people who owe them money try to say. I had this happen to me when I moved into a new apartment and got a new phone number. I told them 3 or 4 times that the person they were looking for was not at this number. I even told them that I had recently moved and was just assigned the number. They literally said, "Yeah, right." So I called the police. They filed a telephone harassment report for me. I then sent the report to the phone company who set up a tap for me. Whenever the debt collectors would call, I would wait until the call ended, dial a special number and it would figure out what number called me (even if they turned on caller-ID blocking), and note it in a file. After 3 or 4 times, they sent it to the police who contacted the debt collectors and told them to stop harassing me or they'd face criminal charges. It shouldn't have to come to this for innocent people, but this is by no means an isolated or rare incident. Every person I know has had these types of calls, with differing amounts of success at getting rid of them.

bcoates 11y ago

Because once a debt has been turned over to a collections agency it is not in your interest to pay it. The window of opportunity to not have a credit strike has closed. Paying the bill will not improve your credit. The counterparty has already written off the debt, if suing was a credible option they wouldn't have sold it to collections. They harass because it's their only recourse. It's a mistake to communicate with collections regardless of the legitimacy of the debt.

fnordfnordfnord 11y ago

>I understand that sometimes an old number or something might be called in error but that has be a pretty rare thing I hope you're starting to get the impression that errors are not as rare as you believed they were this morning. I know I have received all manner of erroneous debt collection calls (looking for relatives, looking for people I've never heard of, etc). > and something easy to deal with on the receiving end. Obviously, it isn't. > I think the best way to avoid robocalls from debt collectors is to not let your debt go into collections. If anyone deserves to have their phone bill crammed, it's people who say things like that. I had mine crammed when I was in college & couldn't/wouldn't pay the several hundred dollars in extra charges; it followed me around for years. BTW, if anyone is a Sprint or Verizon customer since 2010 and has had their bill crammed, there has been a huge fine, & websites set up to pay restitution. https://www.fcc.gov/guides/cramming-unauthorized-misleading-or-deceptive-charges-placed-your-telephone-bill https://www.fcc.gov/guides/cramming-unauthorized-misleading-...

dragonwriter 11y ago

> But if that is the route they want to go the FCDPA clearly states that they can force the debt collector to cease communication for the most part and the avenues that remain open are via written mail. Most people aren't aware of the FDCPA and its not clear that debt collectors are all that compliant with it. In any case, the FDCPA only requires collectors to stop contact when they have received a written request from the debtor. > I understand that sometimes an old number or something might be called in error but that has be a pretty rare thing and something easy to deal with on the receiving end. Inaccurate numbers getting called (and not just "old numbers that were once valid for the debtor") isn't (AFAICT, from direct experience) a particularly rare thing, nor will debt collectors stop calling when they reach an inaccurate number (nor will they accept a request to stop calling at that number.) > I think the best way to avoid robocalls from debt collectors is to not let your debt go into collections. Sure, if by "your" you mean "no one who has ever been, either through intentional misrepresentation to avoid contact by debt collectors, or by past use, or for any other reason, had their account associated with your phone number".

jasonlotito 11y ago

I've been getting calls for 4 years from debt collectors for someone else. Not for my debt, but for someone else's debt and legal troubles. So when telling them to stop calling me hasn't worked, what can I do? It's 4 years now, and anyone calling for the old person at this point is being negligent.