Have you been receiving harassing calls from WA, FL, CO with the numbers 509-590-4325, 239-214-2181, 239-214-2288, these belong to a company in Oak Brook, IL called Enterprise Recovery Systems or ERS.
Or you can call him at work at 630-574-3113, you can also try reaching another executive, Sam Thomas Tornatore at ERS, as he also can reached at the 630-574-3113 number to let them know you are annoyed by their phone calls.
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mark
| 8 replies
here are the board members at ERS, you can let them know you thoughts
I've said it again, and I am sure I will say it many more times in the future, POSTING HOME PHONE NUMBERS IS A BAD IDEA.
Why?
(1) It can get you in a lot of trouble. This is the sort of thing which treads on violating criminal law, and can result in a subpoena for any available data about your post. This has been held true even when the information was publicly available from other sources.
(2) You don't know what nut job out there may decide to act on this information. Do you really want somebody's kid to be terrorized simply because you feel they have a dirtbag parent?
I appreciate the temptation to fight fire with fire, but don't descend to the level of your opponent.
That said, business contact information is fair game, along as you don't advocate anything illegal or improper be done with it.
I have to reply to your post in that your phone number, address and everything else about you is no longer private.....tax records, and public records readily reveal all this stuff.....it is no longer a privacy issue and most constitutional attorneys will tell you that you have no constitutional right to privacy......I guess it really depends on who can afford the best attorney these days, doesn't it?
This isn't a right to privacy issue. There is some very specific law on this. It can be seen as an incitement to violence. Do as you think best, but I did a fair bit of research on this a couple of years ago, and you are on thinner ice than you may suspect.
The defense of "public information" has not held water in the courts, because the act of posting such information in a context like this was found to be an effort to encourage others to take action against the person targeted. You may not want anyone to do anything illegal, but you clearly want people to polish up their torches and pitchforks. And once they are polished, some nut may actually decide to use one. People have been prosecuted and gone to jail for doing exactly what you have done.
Furthermore, just because somebody is married to a [***], perhaps hanging in there because of the kids, should they have to be subjected to retaliatory phone calls? The kids? The elderly in-laws? When you uncork the genie's bottle, you never know what may happen. I just believe that there are more appropriate ways to deal with these problems, without potentially inflicting the same kind of harm on innocent people that we object to some of these callers inflicting on us.
No one dislikes telephone predators any more than I do, but retaliation by tele-terrorizing homes potentially inhabited by innocents is not a method I can agree with. I hope you will re-think this strategy. I know you are trying to stop folks you perceive to be bad guys. The difficult thing about fighting bad guys is not becoming a bad guy yourself in the process. It is an easy trap to fall into, and we all should be wary of it.
If these guys are violating FDCPA/FCRA build a case and take some money away from them. If they are getting on your last nerve, block their calls. If you need help doing that, let me know. It is easy and can be done for free.
If you have a beef with ERS over a government student loan, try the US Department of Education website re their authorized collection agencies for the USDOEd.:
ERS has indeed broken the rules. They called me BEFORE a payment was due - a "friendly reminder call," they claimed! That IS harassment - they may make abusive calls only AFTER a due date - only if/when a payment is LATE. I have made formal complaints to the IL State Attorney General. What they did was try to get $ EARLY, which is explicitly against the collection laws.
Nice observation! Yes, predatory collection practices tactics used throughout the industry. Wonder how many people without realizing it have this happen? That "reminder call" that may come disguised as a full disclosure call for credit cards, mortgage, or whatever but it's before the due date or before the considered late date. Mortgage companies have a 15 day grace period before more charges are applied. So, those calls may come anytime before that. Then we have the more cowardly and predatory actions played by some of the less professional and less ethical collection types that are using non disclosure calls never a message left not showing caller ID information and if answered you receive a hang up or "wrong name" "wrong number" type response and never know it's them doing it. Industry use of outsourcing / BPO's / call centers / telemarketers have created a monster preying on the elderly, vulnerable, and uninformed. Call your servicer you may be surprised about the "Reminder Calls" BS excuses. It's the consumer that needs protection from these cowards.
You'll have to show us where a payment reminder rises to harassment or is "explicitly against the collection laws". On its face that argument would belly-flop in an FDCPA action, and most state laws merely parrot federal.
Absent any other factors, it will be the agency's position that the very fact you are in some installment plan with a third party collector creates justified worry that you, a delinquent debtor, need someone to hold your hands and nag you into keeping your agreement, notwithstanding the circumstances creating that debt.
What would make trouble for that position is the content of the reminders. A simple nudge to pay as agreed is hardly violative. An indication that you should or must pay sooner or pay a higher amount or otherwise submit to an arbitrary change of terms would be jerking you around, something that dirty debt collectors love to do after agreeing to a plan. Trying to change the plan so that you pay more overall gets you into a "character, amount, or legal status of debt" claim, definitely ripe for punishment.
I should need not discuss that insults and idle threats are always off the table. This destroys your assertion that "they may make abusive calls only AFTER a due date". There is *NO TIME* when "abusive calls" magically become legal. But you have to be strict in reading what "abusive" means. Your feeling of irritation from a single phone call does not mean a law was broken.
The context of reminders must also be examined. "A simple nudge", as I said, on its own gets a pass. However, if you have contact restrictions in place, an option and right granted by the FDCPA, the context changes. You could have declared certain days or hours as "inconvenient" per statute for contact. You could cut off phone calls altogether, forcing a USPS channel only. If you'd set those boundaries by written notice sent USPS Certified, stupidly ignoring your notice would hand you a solid claim of harassment. Again, you don't have a violation if you're angered by accident. You must establish that the agency *meant* for you to feel abused, oppressed, or harassed.
+1
bo
| 3 replies
I get "reminders" every month in my Email from DirectTV to pay my bill, usually well after I have paid. I don't take offense despite my 10 years of never missing a timely payment. I think it just underscores the fact that to them "customers" are just a homogenous mass to be treated with an equal level of suspicion and distain at least once a month. Truly, we are just a number, and the lowest common denominator among us determines how we all will be treated. We continue our slow creep back to 1984.
Anything that arrives by email is, at worst, a low-grade annoyance. Just set-up a filter that send the trash email to the trash folder instead of the in box. I have about 20 set up at home and at least 100 at work.
Gmail works well for this-I do have a couple that get past the spam filter (or whatever it is) and go to my inbox and stuff from my inbox in the spam folder, but all-in-all, it works well-plus I can hover my cursor over the email and get the actual EMAIL ADDRESS and not who or what they're claiming to be!
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