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.
Posted by lizweston under Liz's Blog
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Debt collection rules need to be modernized and reformed, the Federal Trade Commission says. But its recent proposals won’t do much to keep rogue collectors from harrassing debtors (or innocent bystanders, for that matter).
For example, the FTC wants to restrict debt collectors from calling cell phones and sending text messages to consumers without prior consent, noting that such communication often costs the receiver money.
But creditors are likely to respond to such a change with boilerplate agreements that force the consumer to agree to such contact if they want credit, thus allowing collectors to continue to use up minutes and text allotments.
Other changes to the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act that the FTC proposed include:
- Increasing the amount consumers can collect from collection agencies for FDCPA violations. (The amount, $1,000, has been unchanged since the Act was passed in 1977. The same amount would be about $3,600 in 2008 dollars.)
- Requiring debt collectors to provide better information to consumers about the name of the original creditor as well as a full account of the total principal/interest/fees and other charges that make up the debt.
- Granting the FTC regulatory authority to issue rules under the FDCPA
- Requiring collectors to better explain consumer rights under the FDCPA. For example, if a consumer sends a timely written dispute or request for verification, the debt collector must stop collection efforts until it has offered the verification in writing/
These changes are long overdue. But what we really need is beefed up enforcement to make sure fair debt collection laws aren’t a joke. It’s still too easy for collection agencies to flout the law and for rogue collectors to skip from one agency to another.
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Here are some of my related columns on debt collectors:
