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Relief & Debt Consolidation
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Debt
Collector Harassment: How To Resolve This Problem
Having collectors harass you can be embarrassing
and humiliating, especially if they attempt to contact you
at your workplace. Sometimes, it can be worse than
this, with
threats of violence and jail. Recently, a lot of people have
also complained about unauthorized withdrawals from their bank
accounts. These are some pretty heavy-handed techniques and
can be considered abusive. It's not that collection agencies
don't have the right to call you to attempt to collect a valid
debt that is owed on your part. However, this does not free
them to use some of these techniques in doing so. It also does
not free them from treating in you in the proper and fair matter
you deserve.
There is a law called the Fair
Debt Collection Practices Act that helps protect you and your rights, regarding unethical,
illegal and unfair debt collection practices, including attorney's
who commonly collect debts. Bill collectors and collection
attorney's should be fully aware of this act and the rules
regarding how they are allowed to collect debts from you. Unfortunately
too many of them get away with it, because a lot of people
are unaware of the act, it's hard to prove a lot of the harassment
and a lot of the collectors are not properly trained and there
is such a high turnover rate in this industry.
The
first thing you need to do to avoid being taken advantage
of by bill collectors or avoid taking the harassment you
shouldn't have to, is to know exactly what they are not
allowed to do. This can help you confront a harassing collector,
when they begin to harass you, therefore possibly stopping
the harassment in its tracks. The practices that are
not allowed include, threatening violence or criminal acts or anything
that may harm you, using obscene or profane language, advertising
your debt for sale, calling you over and over again with the
express purpose of harassing or annoying you and not revealing
to you who they are on purpose.
In addition, you should also know that they are not allowed
to falsely claim that they are working for a debt collector
if they are not, give you false information about who they
are, such as their name and the amount of the debt you owe.
They can also not give you false information on the fact that
an attorney is involved if they are not, they cannot say they
are a government official if they are not, they cannot threaten
to seize or garnish your property if that is not legal, they
cannot send you falsified documents, or say that documents
are legal if they are not. A few other things they cannot do,
includes saying you have committed a crime or broke the law
if you have not or saying that they are going to tell false
credit information to someone else, or actually doing so. Knowing
this can help you in stopping harassment, because the first
step knows what constitutes harassment.
While dealing with harassment at the same time as trying to
decide if you should consolidate or not can be stressful. If
you know your rights according in regards to being harassed
you will be better able to deal with the creditors who abuse
these rights and possibly head them off. This in the long run
can give you more time to resolve the debts in a civilized
manner and perhaps take advantage of consolidation and stop
the creditors from harassing you in the first place.
As
you can see there are many out there who would take advantage
of trying to collect a debt from you and take advantage of
you not knowing your rights in regards to this. Being aware
of the Fair Debt Collections Act can really be a good idea
for you, if you are in this situation. You must also make sure
the person who is harassing you is aware of the act as well.
If they are not and continue to harass you, you should make
every effort to contact their supervisor and bring up the act
and the violation of the act that you have experienced. Being
fully aware of your rights in this manner can save you a ton
of grief when dealing with harassment from debt collectors
and free you up to properly research how you can get rid of
your debt completely, either by consolidation or otherwise,
and be rid of the collectors too, good luck!
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: 2007
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