Dear Liz: With the rise in personal delinquencies these days, my husband and I are in the same boat as a lot of people with common surnames: We get daily robo-calls from collection agencies attempting to collect debts from individuals with names similar or identical to our own.
These are not our debts, and we check our credit report regularly enough to know that these also are not fraudulent charges made to our accounts or accounts opened fraudulently in our names. Is there a way to stop these calls?
Answer: Under the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, you have the right to tell collection agencies in writing to stop contacting you, and they’re supposed to comply.
This, unfortunately, can be tougher than it sounds.
Some of the agencies employing automatic dialers routinely ignore the laws requiring that they identify themselves and provide you with contact information, including the firm’s name and address. If they leave a return phone number, you can try calling it or entering it into an Internet search engine to see if you can determine who’s calling.
If you get a name and address, you can write a letter telling the agency the debts aren’t yours and to stop contacting you. If the agency calls again, you can report it to the Federal Trade Commission or sue it in Small Claims Court for violating the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.
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