Debt Collection Attempts

[gynadia]

What is the name of your state? PA

My wife and I just recently bought a new house and in our new house we signed up for a new phone number. About three months after receiving the new number we started to receive phone calls from Collection Agencies for the person who must have owned the number before us.

Needless to say this person has some serious issues.

My wife and I continiually tell these people that this person cannot be reached by this number and to please stop calling; they don't stop calling and some of the people on the other end of the line even get fresh with us from time to time.

This is very annoying and my wife and I would like to not have to change our number.

Since our attempts at asking these people to stop calling have been unsuccessful; are there any consumer rights and/or options for us at this point?

Your response is greatly appriciated.

[Debt Guy]

You don't have a lot of legal rights in this area -- well, not many that are worth the cost of litigation.

You can try to write a letter to the collection agency but that is often not productive. You might try to write to the general counsel or the president of the collection agency. These tend to be big organizations and things fall into a black hole pretty easy.

Best choice is to change numbers.

Next best is to talk to the phone company about a call blocker service.

Next best is to not answer the phone of you don't recognize the caller ID -- let it go to voice mail and then just delete.

Last best is to just hang up when you get one of these guys on the line.

Now, think about this for a minute. You are a collector. You get lied to a zillion times a day. You have been told over and over that so and so does not live here anymore and every once in a while it is actually true. Would you stop calling just because someone told you to stop because they don't live here anymore? Probably not. At least not until you have tried the number a couple dozen times.

When they get a live voice on the line they know it is a good number. They just leave it in the computer and the autodailer keeps spinning the number.

Your challenge is to make them give up because it is unproductive. That is why I gave you the choices in order of most to least effective.

[JETX]

Originally Posted by gynadia

Since our attempts at asking these people to stop calling have been unsuccessful; are there any consumer rights and/or options for us at this point?

Not really. The problem is... since you're not the debtor, you have no standing in sending them a 'cease and desist' or any other action that would normally be available.
Your only options are to either tolerate and hope that they stop on their own... or change your phone number.