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

} recording ... would be thrown out of court.

Uh-huh. Text won't convey, but this is my "not worried" face.
1)  Federal law and three-quarters of the states support single party consent.
2)  Debt collectors routinely remove the expectation of privacy by announcing their own recording.
3)  The harm meant to be prevented by so-called "wiretap law" is greatly overshadowed by the harm to a consumer which evidence recordings preserve.
4)  Few FDCPA cases go to trial. Defendants typically find it easier to settle out as a cost of bad business than make a stink over details. Therefore neither oral arguments nor recordings are heard by a judge.
5)  Law enforcement, Federal regulators, and journalists rely heavily on recordings of bad behavior to demonstrate the severity of lawbreaking. You don't hear any of them crying "wiretap", only the business which is publicly shamed.

Block them and tell your telphone  company they give you a new number and they will get them  never give any imformaton to a unknow caller    keep track of your card never  trust  knowone if feel supsuious   tell them  nothing then report on here   you can get the last number from your phone service also tell them  re the call they will  go after them as well   keep  a small note book of any unsulal calls  call the phone company   i have gone so far as report the fbi in the usa andin canada the rcmp  computer crimes in canada  do not give nothing zero data  ty   22/23 2019

Please  do something  to stop these people   that number is thre  also the guy said it was his old number  but i m concerned   they might be after my  car  i live in quesnel bc  its low income seniors  and  we all have cars   please contac the rcmp in quesnel bc and head office  ty d h

That is why such a message is left. It conveys urgency yet doesn't say on a voicemail that anyone owes anything.  Legally, you can be contacted once a day at home almost forever. Relatives can be contacted twice. Can;t contact at employer after asked not to. It it is legal to attempt to collect debt older than 7 years. It just can;t be on your credit report longer than 7 years after you last acknowledged it. Every time you pay or say "It;s mine" the time starts over.

And, the original creditor or the person that bought the debt can continue to try to collect it. 7 years later, especially f it is a large debt, they can use all legal means. In MOST cases, an $800 debt will be written off, but I have seen creditors take those to court in batches, sue 500 ppl at a time for smallish balances.

A debt mediation house can be your best bet. It is there because the owner of the debt is thinking of taking it to court.  That can add 1,000 right off the bat.  You can get a 60 cent on the dollar settlement and in a lot of cases get a statement that it was paid in full rather than settled. If you play ball rather than freaking out over the oddly worded voicemail, you could win, big.

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

I haven;t dealt with anyone in Canada. But if they say 'attach assets' they normally mean income or home lien. In the US we don't attach disability or social services cash benefits. I have never heard of trying to take a car? I have seen people that owe money to a vehicle creditor and when you pay we tell the creditor to release the pink slip. We don;t have any interests in cars.

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 to ask if  you 'gave the message'. I, personally, do not check up on people who nicely took down the message who aren't the dbtr. If they call you again, tell them to f off, that you did what you were asked to do and won't do it again.  also, the message should only be a company, number and case #. Nothing else.

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