Using Your Rights and Remedies Under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act to Prevent Debt Collector Abuse.
Telephone harassment by junk debt collectors who buy fragmentary information about alleged old debt for about two cents on the dollar and then try to collect it is the most frequent reason that we are contacted. Alleged debtors are sometimes called several times and calls are often made early in the morning or late in the evening and continue despite requests that they stop. Call are also made to alleged debtors at work and messages are left with fellow employees.
Harassment by junk debt collectors violates the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, which contains specific provision prohibiting telephone harassment, but junk debt collectors have collected billions of dollars – yes billions – because most alleged debtors who are subjected to harassment do not use their legal rights and remedies, and enforcement of the Act by the Federal Government has not been has not been rigorous.
For example, Expert Global Solutions and its subsidiaries, ALW Sourcing , , NCO Financial Systems, Inc., and Transworld Systems, are the world’s largest junk debt collectors and recently agreed to pay $3.5 million to settle charges by the FTC that it deliberately and systematically engaged in telephone harassment of alleged debtors. As usual in these cases, Expert Global was not required to admit that it had done anything wrong.
The payment by Expert Global of $3.5 million which sounds like a lot of money, is chump change for Global. In 2012, according to Corporate Advisory Solutions , a Philadelphia-based consultancy, third-party debt collectors earned $12 billion.
If you are being harassed by a debt collector, keep a detailed written record of the date and time of the calls and what the debt collector said Write to the debt collector demanding that the calls and any other contact stop immediately. If the calls continue or you are subjected to any other type of harassment, contact an attorney to learn more about your legal rights.
