Style Collector

Style Collector

Stop Collection Calls and Make Debt Collectors Pay

The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) is the basis for effectively dealing with debt
collectors. The Federal Trade Commission has useful links to information about the act.

We studied the act, used a step by step approach, and reduced our harassing collection calls from 906 in a 6 month period to almost zero afterwards.

But we are ahead of ourselves. We need to start at the beginning.

In November 2008, my wife and I faced a dark reality. We were out of money to pay our debts. We had been fortunate that neither one of us ever had to deal with not paying our bills on time, much less not at all. Talk about a dramatic change in life style.

Our first reaction was panic. Our second reaction was to talk with a lawyer friend. His advice:
don't file bankruptcy, treat everyone equally and pay something to everyone. Well, we didn't want to file bankruptcy, couldn't pay anything to anyone, but could treat everyone equally - no one got paid. Another suggestion he made was to get a PO Box so that we wouldn't have to endure seeing the collection notices each day.

The phone calls started shortly after the start of 2009. Since we had no solution to our financial circumstances, we decided not to talk to anyone. Opinions vary on whether to talk or not. Our decision was personal and mostly based on fear.

Our solution to ignoring the phone calls was to turn the ringer off on all the house phones. Next, weused a feature of the phone company called "forward calls if busy or no answer". Now, calls were forwarded to our cell phone which we always had on silent. We identified the caller before deciding to answer it or not. Most of the time identifying the caller was fairly straightforward with free reverse number links. After a debt collector was identified, we entered the name into our contact list in a coded manner so we could easily recognize it as a call to ignore. We adopted the system of preceding the name with "bc" which stood for bill collector. When we found a collector used multiple phone numbers, we followed the name with a number. For instance, bill collector name coding was bcname01, bcname02, etc. We got up to 15-20 calls a day - not every day but frequently.

We lived with the barrage of calls until the end of May 2009. Beginning in June, we started making a record of every call we got. We took pictures of our caller id log with a digital camera. About August, we were surprised by how many calls had been recorded.

At that point, we decided to do something with our data. We contacted several local attorneys about our case. We were surprised at the lack of interest. Next, we did a lot of
googling and found a national firm. They agreed to take a closer look at what we had. One of the first things they told us was that the FDCPA would not allow them to do anything with original creditors. We would have to file a complaint with FTC to deal with the original creditors. That was an eye opener for us.

Our attorney said they could deal with 3rd party debt collectors. They agreed to represent us.  Through FDCPA complaints over the next several months, they were able to stop the collection calls.

Between June and December, 2009, we recorded 906 calls from 27 numbers. After December, 2009, the number of harassing phone calls dropped to a fraction of what they were. After another 4 months they almost entirely stopped. We still get an occasional aggressive collector but we quickly nip them in the bud.

Our experience shows a few simple tools combined with discipline, courage, perseverance, and a good FDCPA attorney can get nagging debt collectors off your back and may get you few extra dollars for your efforts.

 Our experince dealing with debt collectors turned out to be very satisfying. Our piece of mind improved considerably.  To deal with debt collectors on your terms, visit http://www.thecbsite.com/stopcollectioncalls.html

About the Author

We had significant experience with debt collectors and their antics since 2008.  We reduced our collection calls from 906 in a 6 month period to almost zero afterwards.  The debt collectors paid everything including us. 

Paul Weller - The Butterfly Collector (acoustic cover)