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

I got the same message

Yes, how very not helpful. It's the highly popular curt "block and ignore" response, and only 10.5 years too late, to a question which Jennifer did not ask.

Her question concerned the legal telephone conduct expected of debt collectors, not how to silence the rings. I've responded thoroughly this year because the question remains relevant today.
https://800notes.com/arts/harassing-calls-fro ... 605618756852748

I don't believe that anyone using a major mystery caller website in the year 2018 finds that "get a call blocker" is an original or obscure thought. It takes very little exposure to 800Notes before someone, somewhere, mentions call blockers. It's seemingly part of every third remark: "This is my favorite blocker / Get a call blocker / I blocked the call / Somehow the call evaded my blocker / Why don't you have a call blocker yet / I'm smarter than a scammer 'cause I got a call blocker / I'm not bothered anymore 'cause I got a call blocker, yet I come back here every day to complain about the blocked calls"

Call blocking does not solve a nuisance call problem any more than an umbrella stops a rain cloud from dumping water drops. Frankly, all of you "block/ignore" campers should migrate to your own website where you can congratulate each other all you like for playing ostrich while frauds and criminals operate unchecked.

You haven't considered how such debt collection agencies may react, the kind which already misinterpret the FDCPA to their own advantage. See, they expect call blockers and evasive tactics. They get blocked and the hunt is on for a "deadbeat running away from problems". So they might call every number at the employer, and Mom and Dad, and all the relatives, and all the neighbors, and one's fourth grade teacher, anyone at all who might help stir gossip and false shame. Now you have maybe forty or fifty people getting hassled. What do you tell them all? "Get a call blocker"?

Perhaps instead of expanding the collateral damage, the victim could take Jennifer's lead and find options for directly confronting the source of the disturbance. Fortunately the FDCPA provides tools to that very end, limiting or pinching off the unwanted calls to an alleged debtor by simple notice. No software to install, no hardware to connect, no telco service to order, and no wiggle room for the offending collection agency. Oh, and said offender can be sued for noncompliance, yielding a fat check paid to the victim. When was the last time a call blocker paid you for its use?

Great idea!

Okay, you are saying that a person should answer "every" call that comes from an unknown area code or where CID shows "unknown", "unavailable", or just a string of numbers.  Does anyone see the problem here?  Sorry, my thinking is that if a collection company has your account, containing all of your contact information, then their first contact should be a written notice.  This would then open a "legitimate" line of communication.  This is how honest companies do business.  Only the bottom feeders who buy old, noncollectable debts (usually written off by the original collector) for pennies on the dollar continue to resort to the constant haranguing phone calls in the hopes of snagging a contact.  Sending Cease & Desist and Request for Verification of Debt letters is all well and good, but how do you send them if you have no written name, address, account number, name of creditor, phone number, etc?  Lastly, to those of you who say "just pay what you owe", not all of us owe any debts.

} you are saying that a person should answer "every" call that comes from an unknown area code or where CID [is a dud]

It's unclear whose remarks have drawn your attention, but I'll toss my few cents. I have long advocated a direct approach to calls from a debt collection agency (DCA). Accepting every ambush call in real time is a personal choice. I've made that choice when it was important for me to firmly establish the source and purpose of some secretive coward's calls, and also demonstrate that annoying calls are part of the plan and not an accident. I've landed some of my worst blows against DCAs by documenting their dozens of legal violations created via phone. It helps, of course, that I log everything and can soon pick up on patterns during the DCA's campaign, and begin to respond only to those calls which appear to come from the company under scrutiny.

} [an agency's] first contact should be a written notice

Well, that would be nice as a standard. One Canadian province made that a law. The rest of us 'murricans can be subject to a hail of calls in the first week, I'd say precisely because the FDCPA is written to allow five days before all the "G-letter" disclosures need to get mailed. Paper and ink and letter vendors raise the cost of getting paid, versus a quick hustle by phone. Also in play is the salesman concept of trying to limit the consumer's time to weigh a decision to pay.

} Only the bottom feeders ... resort to the constant haranguing phone calls

Again I wish that were true. I've had the same poor treatment from DCAs chasing assigned "in stat" debt, and from very prominent name-brand creditors with huge advertising budgets. They were put on notice to quit calling at given times and places. They ignored instructions and piled on the calls. In time I make them burn bags of money on lawyers and payouts to me.

} how do you send [DV and cease-comm letters] if you have no written name, address ...

I guess you don't when the bums have gone to extra trouble to hide themselves and won't be tricked into painting a target. I think this loops back to the exercise of responding to unwanted calls. Different category here, but I was once able to pinpoint a small storefront in South Florida which I'm very sure was blasting me with illegal sales calls, simply by piecing together conversations with its employees and scraps of intel I found on my own. When vulnerable Americans are targeted by the Phonies, somewhere a dishonest American benefits. The sleuthing and probing comes at a cost, one which is weighed against a desired outcome and the chances of success.

} those of you who say "just pay what you owe"

Hey, the shills mutter that stuff in their dreams. They can't help their inane outbursts. The worst industry bullies either need time on the psych couch or are total hypocrites, living in hock themselves. We should be keen to remind them that the FDCPA's authors and defenders don't much care what is owed. The Act does not test the alleged debtor's morality. It holds the collector to a standard of conduct, which must be divorced from all debt liabilty discussion to be purely enforced. Therefore the law does more than protect people who owe nothing. It says that even if nine different ways are found to prove someone owes, a humane method of collection still matters. The collector who ignores his boundaries must not only lose his prize but pay a steep price.

I was receiving calls a few years ago from a debt collector demanding I pay "my PacTel bill". He said it was for my past due Pactel telephone bill from my California phone. I've NEVER had a phone in California... I've never even VISITED California. He kept calling even after I had explained it. He finally stopped after I threatened to SUE him.
I pay MY bills, but it will be a cold day in HELL when I pay something I don't owe!

It is unless you tell them a specific time not to call, or a specific time ONLY to call.  At least, telling them this will let them know - whoever "them" are - they are indeed limited in their calling and had better pay attention to it!  Time zones don't matter if you tell them when to call/when not to call; make sure it's in writing, too, though.

oh wow can you really do that I think I might just do that do you send ck or money order

Oh wow, will Kristina know or care eleven years hence? I had my abbreviated say here six months ago about the "direct pay" fallacy, responding to Laura.

I fleshed out my argument last year in a number thread for a specific collector: https://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-855-876-5380/17#p1247525191517942520

Before you pull out that checkbook for an alleged debt, you have to think hard about what that money is buying you, where it really ends up, and who benefits. Frequently those answers are not so cut and dried, and your unquestioned compliance is not the best reaction. Your motivation should about dissolve when the collectors have cheated and lied for a faster payout.

I am getting calls attempting to collect a debt from someone other than me.    I have explained several times to this collection agency that they have the wrong numbers (including calling me at work).    However, they keep on calling and calling.    How do I stop them?

Many times I've written about the "not me" problem, arguably the one most commonly generated by the collection industry, whose members display no motivation to control. It's cheaper and easier for your collector pals to assume that the hunted person is hiding below your kitchen sink, or that the alleged debtor is you playing like Richard Kimble with aliases.

I link below to a little essay from 7.5 years ago. The hyperlinks and price quotes are a little outdated, and the unmentioned CFPB was open for business two months later, but the rest holds up. The general idea is to get on a paper trail, invoke laws that help you, and make the offenders pay if they don't obey.

https://800notes.com/forum/ta-34af6a034ba34b6/unending-collection-calls

You notice I'm not discussing call blockers. Blocking is not stopping, no more than an umbrella can stop all rainfall. This is the part the block 'n' ignore crowd never understands. A commission-starved debt collector will call everyone and the neighbor's parakeet until someone opens a wallet or purse. You can't tell them all and your boss to "just get a call blocker". No, the point is that debt collectors should not get away with their lazy man's detective work or offloading their drama to a dozen people they've never met. They caused the problem, they need to control it, or else you will via summons and complaint.

They will continue to hound you until hell freezes over or until they think you are somehow able to pull money out of a body orifice.

Sad, but true.

There's more to do besides resigning oneself to continued pestering. I suggested as much one year and two weeks ago in my own reply to Mrs. Johnson.
https://800notes.com/arts/harassing-calls-fro ... -know?page=c290

A judgment collector and its counsel are expected to play nice and pay heed to FDCPA provisions. The Johnsons could have asked the opposition to stop writing and/or calling, or limit the times and means of contact to what's convenient. The couple could let their attorney handle all the crabby demands. What's the creditor gonna do, sue Mr. Johnson again?

Too many collectors post senselessly here or try and remove posts that appear to expose them after they open an account, they are the ones who have avatars beside their alias and advocate paying debt, even if it is too old to collect on in the courts with statue of limitarions running out, they are reptiles who seek almost pure profit on what they paid peanuts for from suckers who believe their BS or rude harassment.

Sorta defeats 800 Notes' mandate to allow these reptiles to join and make and account to remove posts doesn't it?

It is now illegal to call ones neighbor in Ontario.  Get your facts straight. An umbrella prevents you from getting soaked and a lawyer can play god to stop the rain. Your analogies reflect the mentality of those mental schleps who enter the trade of harassment for money. You're a gas!