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I keep getting calls from Midland Credit Mgmt. I never pick up the calls, but the web says they are a debt collector. The web also IDs them as Scammers. They've been reported to the BBB. I have checked my credit report and know I'm not in debt. I block these numbers, but they just keep using a different number.

You may be set up for disappointment if not a long conflict. Your responses thus far won't defend your rights and will not deter Midland's worst impulses. Your homework on "the web" may need to move past bare search engine results. Here are some brief advisories:

Triple-B is a glorified chamber of commerce known for grade inflation, complaint burial, and running a payola scheme. Companies which bother to handle complaints skate by on replies which are often empty gestures or soothing boilerplate. They are not motivated to alter the behavior which draws complaints in the first place.

I observe that many people pull credit reports in reaction to debt collector contact. This may satisfy emotion but proves nothing. What's written or missing there does not determine your debt liability. Credit reports profile your payment performance, not your supposedly unpaid bills.

Midland Credit and its pal Midland Funding (and a few other family names) have been longtime Encore Capital Group subsidiaries, and longtime lawbreakers. They've been sued and fined and spanked by most US states, the CFPB, and innumerable citizens who tired of their mechanized abuse. Midland made history in 2011 as the first state AG defendant in a 'robo-perjury' case while collecting non-mortgage debt. I doubt there's one dirty trick in the junk debt playbook they haven't tried.

I review these facts because, for most people, debts far outlive their seven years on credit reports. Like others in the junk debt buyer (JDB) market, Midland gathers old accounts by the truckload and badgers people to pay with at best wobbly respect for their legal restraints and usually no proof the debts are valid. They have umpteen dozens of phone numbers to throw at your one line, computers dialing all day, and cheap labor to harvest payments.

JDBs also love to file lawsuits. Their favorite defendants are people who blocked and ignored the calls and tossed away the letters. They enjoy steady income from summary and default judgments, chained to people who are summoned repeatedly to "status hearings" or the like, just in case they get some new some money the plaintiff missed. Whether or not anyone truly owes, JDBs won't care and don't need to until challenged correctly.

Maybe MCM has nasty plans for you, so knowing what they are would be a big help. If they're pinning a debt on you, proper notice with specific disclosures on paper is obligatory. Best watch your mailbox a while. The other likely reason for the call campaign is that somebody else allegedly owes, and you're being pestered by skip tracers to help the manhunt. Runaway skip tracing inspires more complaints on sites like this than the many far worse sins of the industry.

Either way you have rights to a quieter phone and freedom from costly lies. You've an opponent which is quite visible in San Diego. One curt "put up or shut up" letter, by USPS Certified preferably, may spare you grief from chasing down MCM's disposable phone numbers. It might at the other extreme lead to a fat check, paid "to the order of Jen" for your trouble if they won't play nice. Right now we don't know where this trail goes. We do know it's time to stop following and start leading.

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FTC and CFPB material on US federal collection law:
https://www.consumerfinance.gov/consumer-tools/debt-collection/
https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/rule ... ctices-act-text
CFPB Q&A: What is an unfair, deceptive or abusive practice by a debt collector?