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

I cant even get the name of the company, i think its an old uncollectible debt that i wouldve paid had i known who is owed. They call 2 or 3 times a week. There is no stopping it because when you try to get their information they hang up.

} i think its an old uncollectible debt that i wouldve paid had i known who is owed
I'm hoping you mean that you might have paid years ago, before the account fell into the hands of evident lawbreakers who refuse to pursue it in a transparent or honest manner. This assumes the account was once yours and genuinely past due, and a creditor holding a reasonable basis for its claim. When you're forced to work in the dark it becomes critical to not even discuss that you "woulda/shoulda" paid under any circumstances.

I see we have a cousin to Sigma957 and a fresh pile of examples of how debt collectors have the strangest ideas about their binding laws. Limits on contact seem to be distorted the most frequently, as seen again here ....

} Legally, you can be contacted once a day at home almost forever. Relatives can be contacted twice.
} They can call you twice. Generally that is 2 unanswered voicemails. But if you answer and say you will pass the message, they can call you a couple times more

* Once more with a numb feeling, Federal law does not set and never has set specific numeric limits on frequency of contact to alleged debtors OR to non-debtors, with the exception of the "one bite" granted per skip trace informant.
* The FDCPA is not in fact so crammed with exceptions and decision detours based solely on one's family tree or willingness to "pass the message". (... the latter tactic being a common unfair ruse to apply pressure through witless "nearbys")
* The Act does not get very granular in separating a failed from a successful attempt to communicate. There remains solid case law supporting the idea that "unanswered" and unconnected calls may also count as "communication". Therefore collection agencies do not enjoy license to rain down "peekaboo" calls all day and all week.

} such a message ... conveys urgency yet doesn't say on a voicemail that anyone owes anything.

Not that I really want to continue re-arguing the same handful of aged remarks on the lead thread page, but "Foti violation" was not the issue covered by "edgework" and "partie4life". In short, the latter was a landlord being hassled about a tenant by URSI, a known lawbreaker. Said landlord disliked the repeated skip tracing, held several conversations with their agents, and probably all but begged URSI to stop calling. URSI refused.

Splitting hairs over call content buries the lead. The short version is that the landlord respected her/his tenant's privacy and the collectors did not. The tenant was not likely to come live on the landlord's couch and was therefore never going to be found there. That fact was not changing to suit some lackey's commission quota. URSI had no good reason to maintain the skip trace barrage on an obvious dead end, and would have owed the landlord a fast grand in judgment had he or she known and invoked FDCPA rights.

} It it [sic] is legal to attempt to collect debt older than 7 years. It just can;t [sic] be on your credit report longer than 7 years after you last acknowledged it. Every time you pay or say "It;s [sic] mine" the time starts over.

Please, not this again. Credit reporting and debt collection are two distinct and separate activities. For reasons I may never grasp, a large swath of the populace insists upon confusing the seven year FCRA time limit for reporting of delinquent accounts to the credit bureaus with the highly variable Statutes of Limitations found in each State. The facts are plain to any who study them:

* A derogatory tradeline must vanish from credit reports seven years from the last known "date of last activity", typically a consumer payment, not "after you last acknowledged" some moldy account, or else reporting could persist until our sun goes nova.
* What payment or the "admission against interest" can reset is the SoL, the (often debatable) "sue by" date.
* Last I read, no seven year SoL exists on any consumer debt.

Time-Barred Debts  (FTC)
Time-Barred Debts: When Collectors Cannot Sue You for Unpaid Debts  (Nolo)

} A debt mediation house can be your best bet. ... You can get a 60 cent on the dollar settlement. ... If you play ball rather than freaking out over the oddly worded voicemail, you could win, big.

I can't tell if you'd made a double addendum or merely cast this to the air. Nor is the meaning of "debt mediation house" clear. The credit fixer/consolidator creeps tend to be predatory advance fee frauds who ask clients to gamble against their predatory lenders and simply dig a mass grave for the client's assets. The hustler consumer lawyer types are not "winning big" with the routine half price sale on an aged account bought for four percent, for which the plaintiff was going to spend zero percent on substantiation if tested.

Meantime, possibly "the oddly worded voicemail" is the bigger problem and the weapon needed to reverse the flow of cash after the judge gavels out. Maybe you can't see it from your cubicle farm, but the creditor is not always right and the consumer does not have to surrender to lies and deception. Rushing to settle is the short game which empowers crooks on both sides of the courtroom. I've gone a different route, scoring real wins, meaning the opposition pays me and I pay nothing.

} Breaking the law is NEVER a cheaper option. The collector or mediator will pay, not the agency.

Not without a fight, the collector pays. The collection industry worked out long ago how to pay occasional penance for a corrupt business model without slowing the money machine. To them it's cheaper to carpet-bomb autodialed calls than perform due diligence toward debtor location. To them it's cheaper not to correct the autodialer when asked to stop calling. It's cheaper to instill fear and mystery for a fat payday than work humanely toward the stated purpose of "resolving debts". It's cheaper to make a big mess and expect the consumers and "nearbys" to clean it up. It's cheaper to pay off a few "whiner deadbeats", as they are seen, than make the fundamental changes which might come of strict FDCPA enforcement.

The three terms in your second sentence denote three very different things and fail to make sense together. Better articulation is suggested if the standard of logic is not hopelessly low.

Maybe because there are thousands of complaints .. they’ve been sued for millions of dollars and lost in court and he had some time to waiste their time talking to these idiots in protest to what they are doing to everyone
** they are harassing my 9 year old daughter and won’t leave her alone .
I personally grabbed the phone and talked to this idiot Spanglish speaking idiot and told this possible  pedophile to stop harassing little girls -
He turned into a big 🐈 and hung up _ yet still calls her from different phone numbers to this day

Does anyone know if it's legal for a collection company to block their caller ID or use an untraceable Google Voice phone number when calling you?

I'm afraid blanket answers, as usual, would be hazardous.

Names escape me now, but I remember a Fair Debt case from several years ago which claimed that generic blocked Caller ID from the defendant, such as "unknown caller" or "private" or "blocked name", was deceptive practice. The judge wasted no words in dismissing the claim, failing to see the problem with Caller ID which accurately reflects the moment. The caller blocked its number, Caller ID reported that fact, no one got hurt, end of story.

Now, if you want to paint dud CID as concealment which is greatly annoying and/or unfair -- and often that's true -- the secrecy needs to create harm in the surrounding facts of the case. In one of my cases I expressed the aggravation which resulted when a debt collection agency (DCA) persisted with frequent "unhelpful" Caller ID long after I had responded to the call campaign. Bad enough the DCA kept calling at times and places I'd set out of bounds, but it continued to play "Hide the ID" when I'd already written to acknowledge the calls and who at home was hearing the rings, removing the need for secrecy. I was peeved by the "business as usual" dialer pattern, which seemed calculated to find us off guard and answering to yet another scripted bully session, to have yet another tense discussion of paying an account which I had already disputed.

The improper timing was an easy winning claim. Their insistence on secrecy I might not have won. There is a parallel concern covered in §1692f(8) of the FDCPA -- enacted when telephones were all rotary dialed and unassisted by message recording or metadata displays -- which instructs collectors to take care that their mailing envelopes don't hint strongly that they think someone owes money. I think if tested, my opponents might argue that they were doing me a privacy favor with the lack of disclosure in Caller ID, needless or not.

Again while out of context, I'm unsure how far you'd get when making a claim based on some "untraceable" and probably disposable phone number. That kind of secrecy raises neck hairs and can indicate the worst sort of extortionists who wear a debt collection cloak to feign legitimacy. There are all manner of honest businesses which use "one way" numbers and don't expect or want responses to the same number. Redirection to some return "drop" number is not an issue, unless of course the company's stress on secrecy makes it too difficult or impossible to respond.

In other words, if DCA thugs use the phone as a blunt instrument of control and coercion, refusing inbounds and only talking when a person answers, and they won't provide a mailing address and they won't send letters, they light up multiple violations concerning fair treatment and required disclosure. I don't see that the clarity of phone number status matters so much as what the subscriber does with that number, perhaps to generate confusion or anxiety or fear.

I'll note here for comparison that the Telemarketing Sales Rule demands honesty in Caller ID from the sales and charity callers it covers. Their calls are required to display a phone number and it should be one which the business genuinely controls. Debt collectors have no burden to display any useful Caller ID. They can of course get dinged for generating misleading CID or outright spoofing.

I'm over these people that can't hardly speak English, harassing me!!! They are getting our cell phone number from somewhere!! It's not in the phone book, so either Verizon or Google is giving them out!!! How do we put a stop to it ???!!!

Most likely you will need to get a new number. When you do, only tell it to family, close friends and necessary businesses like your bank. Tell your family and friends not to divulge it to anyone else. Also, make sure it is not posted to social media or any publicly accessible web site.

Yes, businesses like Verizon may sell phone numbers to "business partners" and it may leak out from them.

How do I stop repeated calls from scammers claiming to be with SSA or Fed. Tax Fraud agency. I've reported both to O.I.G.,changed my number and blocked every number they've used. These people are very threatening, to say the least.

would you please not call me any more

Would you please not reply with your eyes shut to ancient comments on the front page any more?

This thread concerns consumer debt collection, not various forms of government agency impostor fraud. Since your chances of finding and suing the call center are slim, your options are limited and will not stop them from trying.

Your Social Security number isn't suspended. Ever. - FTC, Sep 2018
Tax Scams/Consumer Alerts - IRS summary of various fake tax and impostor fraud

MIDLAND CREDIT MANAGEMENT who uses dozens and dozens of different phone numbers even though they are located (or so they say) in San Diego, California, and the phone calls come from all over the U.S.  They buy old, written off debts from various companies hoping to trick you into paying them.  Many people have stated that they have paid this debt with them but the calls continue to come. Leeches is what they are.  When you get a call, for pete's sake, don't answer it, let it go to voice mail. Then Google the phone number and a high percentage of the time you will find out where the call came from.  When you find nothing from Googling the number,, then it is a bogus, scam number.  If you can block the number. do so.  Inexpensive phone number blockers are sold on eBay.  Some hold up to 1,500 numbers.