According to some estimates, the average American household owes around $90,000 in debt. Particularly in these relatively good economic times, Americans are paying those debts…fulfilling their obligations. But there is a dirty underbelly of the debt collection where credit collectors are violating the rights of Americans and engaging in abusive debt collections.
I’M GOING TO TELL YOU WHAT WE CAN DO TO STOP HARASSING DEBT COLLECTION!
(First step, register your numbers on the do not call list by clicking here!)
There are a wide range of debt collection violations that consumers suffer, but here are the most frequent:
- Improper reporting of amount or other details of debt
- Failure to timely report debt is paid (such as through short sale or negotiation)
- Abusive and misleading debt notices or collection attempts
- Continued calls on your cell phone after you’ve warned the creditor not to call you
If you experience any of these violations, take these simple steps…then I’ll work with you to put an end to it all.
Order your credit report (from all three bureaus) and carefully examine how your debt is being reported.
When creditors call you, take very good notes about the call. Did the call come in on an autodialer or robot? Was there a long delay when the call came in? Did an operator pick up after a delay?
After you collect the information, advise the caller that you no longer wish to receive debt collection phone calls.
After you keep a good record of those phone calls…and especially when you record that a debt collector you advised not to continue calling you, give me a call so we can go over all the information. The Fair Credit Reporting Act and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act in particular are powerful tools that can be used to trigger payments to clients of up to $1,500 per call!
So one more time about why it’s so important to keep good records…..phone number calling, was it an auto dialer or robo call, the name of person calling and what they said. Keep a notebook, collect those details…then email the details of those abusive calls directly at weidner@mattweidnerlaw.com or log on directly to our