Harassing calls from a debt collector? Here is what you need to know

Like all unfocused blanket statements of a person's FDCPA rights, yours is rife with hazards.

1)  FDCPA §1692c does support the use of a written "cease communication" notice. The clause does not say this is the best plan for everyone, nor would the CFPB or FTC. If you're the alleged debtor and you lock your debt collector under a cease-comm order, they cannot respond with anything, not even debt validation. The only legal way to continue collecting is in court. People should not be daring creditors to sue them if that reaction is a legal and plausible option.

2)  You cannot guarantee any outcome "after 24 hours" or 24 months from any notice you might send a debt collection agency. The DCA has already done some risk assessment before trying to collect. That assessment may be recalculated based on how you respond, if at all. A person or algorithm makes a choice to obey or ignore a demand for validation, setting of contact restrictions, or a total cease-comm. Each time I send a demand letter I brace for the chance the DCA will select "ignore". I have sued and won when agencies don't take my letters seriously.

3)  Facsimile technology is based on volatile thermal paper and 9600 baud transfer speed. It needed to die with leg warmers and Duran Duran. It also trades security for speed. What's critical is independent, unassailable proof of receipt; USPS Certified remains the only medium which provides that assurance.

I've been receiving phone calls from a bill collection agency that is contracted by the local hospital to chase dead beats.  These calls started in October of 2016 and continue into this month.  The calls ALWAYS arrive during the same one hour window in the middle of the day.  A time when I am rarely home.  The caller ID states that it is coming from our local hospital but in reality the calls are originating from a collection agency in Texas.  You cannot return the call.  Even when I answer the phone, there is rarely anyone there.  When I do actually talk to someone, I found out that most of the people making the calls only speak Spanglish (English with a very heavy Spanish accent) which gets worse when you break their routine and confuse them.  Something that is very easy to do.  I finally decided to reverse the attack.  I identified a Supervisor in the Billing Department of my local hospital and, every time the collection agency called me, I called this person.  If the Supervisor did not answer, I would leave my name and tell them I will keep calling back until I talked to that person about my "bill".  I was always polite but made it difficult for them to get off of the phone with me.  The real fun was getting someone new on the phone that I could tie up for 30 or 40 minutes looking for information that I already knew the answer to.  It took eight times of actually talking with this Supervisor for her to finally correct the problem and get my phone number off their automated system.

The reason I call it a problem?  Neither I nor anyone in my household has been to this hospital in over seven years, I owe them no money nor does anybody in my household AND THEY KNEW THAT THE FIRST TIME I CALLED THEM.  The quality of care is so poor at this hospital, I wouldn't take someone there even if I was mad at them.  By the way, I recorded all of my calls, both the ones I received and the ones I made, just to protect myself from any complaints of harassment.  Hey, I was only returning their calls.

phone #951-381-3264 has called 15 times so far today they leave no message and hang up when i answer caller id says Readers mag. This has been going on for a couple of weeks . I have made multiple reports to my phone company and still nothing has been done!! My phone carrier is Called Frontier here in Fla.

Why waste your time if the debt wasn't yours to begin with?  That sure is an odd definition of 'fun' as you said.

My husband has a judgment against him and the judge told the people we have no money and no assets. We keep getting letters from the attorney. How long can this go on?

I cancelled Goldsgym on Oct 14, 2016, because immediately after joining, the young trainer had me, a 62 yr old women with no warm up, lift 125 lb leg curls, and a very heavy kettleball while sqatting.   It caused by bladder to prolapse.   I cancelled in writing, and my Uro/Gyn doctor even faxed them a letter saying how servere my injury is.   They are still calling, and harrassing, now have a collection agency trying to get the balance.   My credit card denied them.   not sure what else to do, but I'm not paying another penny.   I am thinking of getting a lawyer, since their trainer was not trained, and caused this injury.  also, have been going to physical pelvic therapy.  Doctor said I need surgery.

I have encountered similar problem. My account was hacked and my signup information was changed so I couldn't retrieve my account then I asked a friend for an idea and she recommended a Certified Ethical Hacker to help me get my account back which I took a leap of faith by giving him a trial and he got me account back within 24-48hrs. You can contact him via kingzhackx@gmail.com
if you need to get your account back. Hope this helps.

If the debt is genuine, offer to pay it of at an affordable amount each week.   I was a successful debt collector and NEVER found it necessary to be nasty or threatening.   Once you have accepted the validity of the debt and started paying, the debt freezes; the creditor has to accept that you are doing your best and cannot add fees or interest.   I used to collect many debts  every week and did it by a friendly, approach which was a real help to people who were struggling.

Keep in mind that if you tell them not to contact you, your next communication from them might be a court date to answer a law suit for the collection amount.

Remember that the failure to pay a debt will stay on your credit report for many many years. They may not be able to sue you and that time period (4 years) varies from State to State. Not paying a debt you owe may mean you will not be granted credit again for a new car, home/apartmrnt rental, job you wanted, insurance costs or ability to get insurance. If the debt is written off the IRS treats that as income and if you don't claim it that can mean more problems than you need. Also there would not be any so called bottom feeders if people were honest and simply repaid the money they stole from their creditors in the first place. The creditor trusted the individual and that individual started the entire collection process not the collector. Don't be a bottom feeder not repaying your debts folks.

Try filing for bankruptcy instead of just not paying your creditors. That way your debts will be gone, you have a clean slate and no one calling you. How about that for a novel idea to solve your debt problem instead just complaining and calling people names.

Forward their calls to a 900 sex talk line. That should stop the calls. Or better yet forward the call to another debt collectors number and they can collect from each other. All kinds of ways to have fun with these people.

sounds like you over extended yourselves and were living beyond your means. You lost your jobs and now you blame others for your own bad financial decisions. I never used credit cards because I figured if I could not pay a dollar for something how could I afford to pay a dollar twentyfive for it.

Another suggestion, find out if your state is a one or two-sided consent state for recording. If it is a one-sided state you don't even have to let them know the call is being recorded.  "Eleven states require the consent of every party to a phone call or conversation in order to make the recording lawful. These "two-party consent" laws have been adopted in California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington."  That is from the dmlp.org website.  All other states only require one party to consent for it to be lawful.  If you consent and you are in the other 39 states.. it's lawful.

Not all debt is voluntary. Take medical debt, for example. It is the #1 reason for bankruptcies in this country:

After his recent herniated-disk surgery, Peter Drier was ready for the $56,000 hospital charge, the $4,300 anesthesiologist bill, and the $133,000 fee for orthopedist. All were either in-network under his insurance or had been previously negotiated. But as Elisabeth Rosenthal recently explained in her great New York Times piece, he wasn't quite prepared for a $117,000 bill from an “assistant surgeon"—an out-of-network doctor that the hospital tacked on at the last minute.

It's practices like these that contribute to Americans' widespread medical-debt woes. Roughly 40 percent of Americans owe collectors money for times they were sick. U.S. adults are likelier than those in other developed countries to struggle to pay their medical bills or to forgo care because of cost.

Earlier this year, the financial-advice company NerdWallet found that medical bankruptcy is the number-one cause of personal bankruptcy in the U.S. With a new report out today, the company dug into how, exactly, medical treatment leaves so many Americans broke.

Americans pay three times more for medical debt than they do for bank and credit-card debt combined, the report found. Nearly a fifth of us will hear from medical-debt collectors this year, and they'll gather $21 billion from us, collectively.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/20 ... al-debt/381163/