800-477-6441

I haven't received any of their calls yet.  However, my great aunt (grandmother's sister-in-law) and her daughter-in-law (in another house)have been receiving them "constantly" about my deceased grandmother's estate.  My part of the family has nothing to do with the estate so I have had no intention of calling them back.  They have tried to convince my great aunt that it's a GOOD thing and that they have a file with information for us.  She could only tell that they were saying Phillip's in the company name, but the contact 800 number was the same as the one posted here.

I received 2 VM from these people in the same day.  I have been helping my daughter get back on track with her student loans so I thought the call may have had something to do with that, so I did return the call.  It had nothing to do with her!  They were calling on behalf of Chase Bank to try to recover payment on a credit card owned solely by my late husband.  I had notified Chase that he had passed away, so now the bills come addressed to the Estate of _______.  The caller (Pat Goldberg) was somewhat offensive and threatening.  He instructed me that I needed to settle the debt, I told him that the company had already assured me that I was not responsible.  There was no will, no estate to speak of (whatever there was paid for the funeral and associated costs), nothing went to probate because my name was on everything else (that I am aware of). This bufoon told me that they could probate the estate to recover the debt and that if you assume any assets you should also assume the debt, "after all, I'm sure some of the charges on his card were for the benefit of his family".  What an ass!!!!!  After reading these posts, I wil NOT speak with them again.  I will wait for a letter and then consult a lawyer to see what my options are.

I received a call from this number. After several calls and threats consulted with my attorney.  They not only called me, but my mother-in-law.  This is a bill that I have been paying faithfully since the death of my mother in 2004, and now they said the balance has to be paid in full, check by phone only.  They call daily sometimes two or three times a day. The attorney has asked me to refer all further calls to him.

I received a call from someone named Chantal or Chanel who was inquiring if I was the person handling the estate of XYZ and to please call 800-477-6441 x2134 and a reference # and did not say what company she was from. Thanks to this thread, I am not calling back. I am not sure how they got my number. If they keep harrassing, I also will threaten to sue. Thanks for all the info!

I have also started receiving calls from this debt collection agency about a person I have never heard of.  I have now told them twice that they have the wrong number (I will not give them my name or my information, they have not even asked for it).  I told them today that the next time they contact me about someone I do not even know, they will be hearing from my lawyer.  I will not be harrassed by this company and I made that clear.  

These people actually say in their message that if you are not the person handling the estate to please hang up - then if you are still listening that you are the correct person.  IDIOTS.  The problem is if you are not home when they leave the message they will keep calling.  I could barely hear the second message that was left so I could not even give them the reference number if I wanted to.  Sounded like he was using a cell phone.

I just got a voice message from these sharks yesterday in reference to my ex husband that passed away six weeks ago. His estate was insolvent, meaning he had more debts than assets.

They appear to be all over the internet as a debt collector geared towards estates. I did call back only to hear their recorded message identifing them as Phillips and Cohen and then I hung up and started searching the internet. The number the left to return the call was 866-318-0059.

I don't plan on returning any of their calls. I can't believe how nasty these people seem to be. I just hope they go away quietly. I don't want to deal with harrasing phone calls and my daughter should not have to deal with that after losing her father.

Some woman named Peggy called after she was hung up on since we thought she was a harassing phone marketer.  She identified herself as a employee of Phillips and Cohen and wanted to know who was handling the estate.  Told her no will was left and there was no estate.  She wants my mom to call her.  I asked her why she couldn't tell me what she wanted and she indicated that she could only speak to my mom.  When asked where she obtained my phone number she indicated that it was on my fathers file.  I don't intend to contact her or take any phone calls from her since reviewing this website.  Thank you all for your assistance.  The nerve I spend another New Years and XMAS grieving over my loss and all this idiot can do is try to scam our family out of money that we don't even have.  There is no will, there is no estate, there is nothing other than some goof ball running around using our loved ones social social security number to scam the scammers.  Good Luck scam city participants.

i have received two calls from Jason Rhodes (or Rose)....1-800-477-6441, ext 2172.....i know he has also contacted another friend....not sure where he gets his info other than we all have been roommates in the past or in a landlord-tenant status with the deceased.

I received this call from 800-477-6441 asking for the family of a deceased person (which was me!) I didn't return it, and then the next day it came again and I was so nervous about what it could possibly be and called them.  They wanted me to pay a debt that was signed off 7 years ago!  I am so thankful that the lady next door said to Google this number and here I found all this!  Thank you so much for having this on line.

Since your husbands will was probated call the attorney who represented you and ask him what's up.  From what I am reading these guys are bad news and are just plain dumb.  Ask the lawyer if you can send his/her information to these folks.  I find that when sham companies like these are gotten ahold of by a REAL attorney they run from the light like roaches.  

Also when/if they call repeat to them that you are recording their call.  Find out if you are in a one party state and if you are you do not have to even let them kow you are recording.  But I always do they usuallt tell me I don't have the right BLAH BLAH BLAH.  WRONG!!!!  But do call the attorney

I got the same call from Phillips & Cohen @ 800-477-6441. They left a message for the administrator of the estate of my dead mother. I was supposed to call "Anne Marie @ ext. 2543"

I received a message today asking to call 800.477.6441 about the estate of my exhusband.  I didn't know he had died nor had I spoken with him in several years.  I'm curious to know how these people found me.  A litted freaked out to be honest.

I recieved several calls and messages from this number stating that they wanted to speak with the person financially responsible for the estate of my ex husband's maternal grandfather. My ex husband and I have been divorced for 14 years. I called back the number, which was Phillips-Cullen and Associates, debt collection agency... I did however notify them that I was not in anyway connected to this person.

The same company just called my mother and left her a message. She,too had to play it back several times to understand it. She called me and asked if she should return the call. That is when I decided to "google" the number. Thanks for all the comments. By the way, my father passed away 16 months ago. The estate has been closed for some time. Don't give anyone any information that you don't have to give. There are too many scams out there!

I too received a call from 1800 477-6441 extention 2263 from Phillip. BE CAREFUL There are scams out there that will produce bogus bills and tell you that you are responsible for paying them. You are not if your loved one had homestead exemption they can not come after the home. Most of the time the bills are not legit if they were you would prob receive a certified letter from a legitimate law firm. These people dont have my telephone number so they are calling my moms home. I havent lived there in 20 years and they prob got the telephone number off of zabasearch.com

They are calling me with the same callback number 888-382-8144 and leaving a message with my name and a case number - nothing about an estate. Nobody I know has died, and I don't owe anybody that would need to contact a collector. I'm ignoring the calls and assuming they got my name out of a phone book or something, that somebody with my name owes somebody.

You’re Dead? That Won’t Stop the Debt Collector

MINNEAPOLIS — The banks need another bailout and countless homeowners cannot handle their mortgage payments, but one group is paying its bills: the dead.

Dozens of specially trained agents work on the third floor of DCM Services here, calling up the dear departed’s next of kin and kindly asking if they want to settle the balance on a credit card or bank loan, or perhaps make that final utility bill or cellphone payment.

The people on the other end of the line often have no legal obligation to assume the debt of a spouse, sibling or parent. But they take responsibility for it anyway.

“I am out of work now, to be honest with you, and money is very tight for us,” one man declared on a recent phone call after he was apprised of his late mother-in-law’s $280 credit card bill. He promised to pay $15 a month.

Dead people are the newest frontier in debt collecting, and one of the healthiest parts of the industry. Those who dun the living say that people are so scared and so broke it is difficult to get them to cough up even token payments.

Collecting from the dead, however, is expanding. Improved database technology is making it easier to discover when estates are opened in the country’s 3,000 probate courts, giving collectors an opportunity to file timely claims. But if there is no formal estate and thus nothing to file against, the human touch comes into play.

New hires at DCM train for three weeks in what the company calls “empathic active listening,” which mixes the comforting air of a funeral director with the nonjudgmental tones of a friend. The new employees learn to use such anger-deflecting phrases as “If I hear you correctly, you’d like...”

“You get to be the person who cares,” the training manager, Autumn Boomgaarden, told a class of four new hires.

For some relatives, paying is pragmatic. The law varies from state to state, but generally survivors are not required to pay a dead relative’s bills from their own assets. In theory, however, collection agencies could go after any property inherited from the deceased.

But sentiment also plays a large role, the agencies say. Some relatives are loyal to the credit card or bank in question. Some feel a strong sense of morality, that all debts should be paid. Most of all, people feel they are honoring the wishes of their loved ones.

“In times of illness and death, the hierarchy of debts is adjusted,” said Michael Ginsberg of Kaulkin Ginsberg, a consulting company to the debt collection industry. “We do our best to make sure our doctor is paid, because we might need him again. And we want the dead to rest easy, knowing their obligations are taken care of.”

Finally, of course, some of those who pay a dead relative’s debts are unaware they may have no legal obligation.

Scott Weltman of Weltman, Weinberg & Reis, a Cleveland law firm that performs deceased collections, says that if family members ask, “we definitely tell them” they have no legal obligation to pay. “But is it disclosed upfront — ‘Mr. Smith, you definitely don’t owe the money’? It’s not that blunt.”

DCM Services, which began in 1999 as a law firm, recently acquired clients in banking, automobile finance, retailing, telecommunications and health care; DCM says its contracts preclude it from naming them.

The companies “want to protect their brand,” said DCM’s chief executive, Steven Farsht. Despite the delicacy of such collections, he says his 180-employee firm is providing a service to the economy. “The financial services industry is under a tremendous amount of pressure, and every dollar we collect improves their profitability,” he said.

To listen to even a small sample of DCM’s calls — executives played tapes of 10 of them for a reporter, electronically edited to remove all names — is to reveal the wages of misery, right down to the penny.

A man has left credit card debt of $26,693.77, the legacy of a battle with cancer. A widow says her husband “had no money. He pretty much just had debt.” Asked about an outstanding account of $1,084.86, a woman says the deceased had no property beyond “some tools in the garage” and an 18-year-old Dodge.

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Read All Comments (234) »Not everyone has the temperament to make such calls. About half of DCM’s hires do not make it past the first 90 days. For those who survive, many tools help them deal with stress: yoga classes and foosball tables, a rotating assortment of free snacks as well as full-scale lunches twice a month. A masseuse comes in regularly to work on their heads and necks.

Brenda Edwards, one of DCM’s top collectors, spoke with a woman in New Jersey about her mother’s $544.96 credit card bill.

“She had no will, no finances, nothing,” the daughter said. “Nothing went to probate.” The $200 in the checking account was used for funeral expenses. But the woman also said the family “filed a form with the county,” indicating that perhaps there was a legal estate after all.

“Is anyone in the family in a position to pay this?” Ms. Edwards asked, adding: “I’m not telling you it needs to be paid at all.”

The woman reached a decision. “I will talk to my brothers and sisters and we will pay this,” she said.

Ms. Edwards has a girlish voice that sounds younger than her 29 years. “If you plant a seed and leave on a good note, they’ll call back and pay it,” she said.

DCM started a Web site called MyWayForward.com to provide the bereaved with information, tools and, some day, products. “We will never sell death. But it’s O.K. to provide things that could be helpful to the survivor,” Mr. Farsht said. Death will be the end of one customer relationship but the beginning of another.

Some survivors are surprised, and a few are shocked, that they are hearing from a collector.

Eric Frenchman, an online consultant, said a DCM agent inquired about his late father’s $50 Discover card balance before the bill was even due. Since Mr. Frenchman had been planning to pay it anyway, he emerged from the experience vowing never to get a Discover card himself.

The major deceased-debt firms say such experiences are rare. Adam Cohen, chief executive of Phillips & Cohen Associates of Westampton, N.J., said his team of 300 collectors “are all trained in the five stages of grief.”

If a relative is more focused on denial or anger instead of, say, bargaining, the collector offers to transfer him to the human resources company Ceridian LifeWorks, where “master’s level grief counselors” are standing by. After a week, the relative is contacted again.

DCM executives say some of the survivors not only gladly pay but write appreciative notes. They offered up a stack, with the names deleted, as proof.

One widow wrote that a collector “was so nice to me, even when I could only pay $5 a month a few times.” Saying that money was “so tight” after her husband died, she added: “It was very hard for me, and to get a job at my age. Thank you.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/business/04dead.html?_r=1

March 11, 2009

Chairman Jon Leibowitz
Federal Trade Commission
600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20580

Dear Chairman Leibowitz:

I am dismayed to learn from recent media reports that some debt collection companies have made it a practice to attempt to collect unpaid credit card balances – and perhaps other types of unsecured debts – from the families of the deceased. According to numerous reports, these companies call surviving relatives, often shortly after the death of a loved one, to coax or cajole them into making payments on the deceased relative’s credit card.  To say the least, this practice is distasteful and unethical.  Moreover, this practice may very well violate the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.  I am hereby requesting that the Federal Trade Commission investigate whether debt collection companies are violating the law when they engage in this practice, and exactly what information they are conveying to surviving relatives who are under no obligation to pay off their loved ones’ credit cards.

The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, among its many prohibitions, prevents debt collectors from contacting anyone other than the credit card holder without the prior consent of the holder.  Specifically, the Act provides that “a debt collector may not communicate, in connection with the collection of any debt, with any person other than the consumer, his attorney, a consumer reporting agency if otherwise permitted by law, the creditor, the attorney of the creditor, or the attorney of the debt collector.”  “Consumer” is defined in the Act as a “natural person” who owes a debt.  If this language does not apply to a situation in which the consumer is deceased, I would like to know the basis for such an opinion.  

I find it shocking that a debt collection company would determine that it is worth causing profound anguish and embarrassment in order to collect debts that are sometimes as low as $50, or which result in a payment of $15 a month from a widow or widower who is struggling to make ends meet. If a debt is large enough to be worth collecting, there are legal ways to obtain payment.  First, if a surviving family member has also signed for the card, that family member will be obligated to pay the debt.  Second, an unsecured creditor such as a credit card issuer can obtain payment from the estate of the deceased through a routine probate proceeding, after the holders of secured debt – such as mortgagors– are paid.  This practice of harassing living family members for upfront payments results in putting credit card issuers in the front of the line to get money from an estate, rather than after those who hold secured debt.

Given the current economic situation, in which millions of honest, hard-working Americans are struggling to meet their obligations, this practice is opportunistic and destructive.

In addition to opening an investigation into these practices, I would like the answers to the following questions:

Which debt collection companies (“collectors”) are engaging in the practice of collecting credit card debt from widows, widowers, children, and other relatives of the deceased?

Which credit card issuers are hiring these collectors, or selling their debts to these collectors?  Have the issuers endorsed this practice, either by turning a blind eye toward it or by specifically encouraging it?  

Does the practice of trying to collect unsecured debts from the living relatives of debtors who have passed on violate the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act’s prohibition on communicating with third parties?  If not, why not?  What measures could be taken to make sure that these practices are stopped?

If these practices are currently legal, are these collectors uniformly making sure that they tell living relatives that they have no legal obligation to pay the debt?  Further, are the collectors informing the living relatives of the statute of limitations for collecting these debts?  Are the collectors informing the living relatives that any credit card debt would be paid from the estate only after other secured debts, such as mortgage and car payments, are paid?

Given that the FTC receives more complaints about debt collection companies than any other American business, I hope and expect that you will be thorough in your investigation of this matter.


Sincerely,

Charles E. Schumer
United States Senator

http://schumer.senate.gov/new_website/record.cfm?id=309474

I was a recovery specialist with pca for almost two years. I read a lot of the postings and I have to agree this company is very money hungry. I am glad to say that I am no longer employed there and it looks like the company will be going under soon. When you do bad things you only get bad things back. This company constantly has its employees in fear for their jobs. It is a very stressful and unproffesional company and the worst for them is yet to come!

"regarding the estate of ..... " when i said the person they're calling for wasn't interested and that they need to stop calling, I was told, "i can't just disregard my job mam...." BUT he would tell me what he really wanted and said he would have the permission of the person he was trying to reach, yada, yada, yada. this has been going on for 2 1/2 months at least and 2-5 calls a week!! This is a busines number they are calling how can I make them stop?

This company has been calling my parents regarding a debt owed by my deceased brother.  They are a deceased collection agency.  They have been extremely rude and threatening to my parents and will not stop calling.