For the past 4 weeks I’ve been getting a call from debt collectors for a woman named Roshelle who shares my last name. My first name starts with an R, and that is the only connection we share. I am single, have always been single, have lived here 8 years and before that a retired couple lived here - neither of whom shared my last name.
Usually I don’t answer, but if marked private during the day, I take it because for some reason my business partner’s calls from the UK come in marked private.
Usually they are courteous, but one was quite aggressive. (Amazing to me. Do others put up with this? It didn’t take me long to go off on him.)
You can Google around and get a cease-and-desist letter used for collection agencies. You could try to call the phone company and inform them you are being harrassed, sometimes they will change your number for free. (sometimes :))
You might also want to consider checking your credit report just to make sure no one is doing anything funny with your credit.
Obviously the collection agency believes you are Rochelle and lying to them. And from their viewpoint, if you were Rochelle it would be too easy to say you weren’t and leave the collection agency up in the air.
So simply telling them you’re not isn’t going to help much.
Unfortunately, you have to call them back and tell them you are not the person they are looking for. Ignoring their calls will not make them stop. I keep getting phone calls for “Michael Jones” and my name is nowhere near that.
My current problem: The son of a former employee used my address and home phone number to apply for a cell phone (he thought a home address would be looked on more favorably than an apartment address) That was 5 years ago. Last week, I get a call from a collection agency asking for him. That call was followed a few days later by a letter saying that they were trying to collect a $4800 debt. I called them and explained the situation. They seemed to believe me. I checked my credit reports and did not find any recent activity that was not my own, but I still put a fraud warning on my credit reports.
You probably should keep an eye on your credit reports also.
Unfortunately, they will probably sell the bad debt to someone else or there will be another bad debt, and the calls will start all over again.
Good luck. I got my phone about a year ago, along with a new number, and since then I’ve gotten regular phone calls and texts for Amy, Cynthia and Samantha. No amount of telling these people that they’ve dialed the wrong number, were given the wrong number or their friend’s number has changed will get them to leave me alone.
One fellow in particular (the one looking for Amy) even double-checked with me to make sure he had dialed correctly. He confirmed that the number he has is mine, but I don’t even know anyone named Amy. Every week he calls looking for her for some job reference. A debt collector is looking for Samantha. Funny thing is after a few months of getting her phone calls, I got a piece of mail for her. Turns out she lives on the same property as me, with the same apt #, but a different building. I’m guessing that’s how they got the phone number, but maybe they got part of the address wrong in their search and started calling me instead.
None of them will stop calling. I’ve only been rude to one of them and that’s after he kept calling me rude names in his text messages.
Sounds like the OP may be hearing from a “zombie debt collector”. They buy really old debt, try to find people with even vaguely the same name/address, and harass them into paying off the old debt. They don’t care if you’re the right person or not, just that they can harass you into paying.
Not sure what to do about that - I’ve heard of people changing their phone numbers, but that can be a pain in the butt.
Mentioning that you’re willing to contact your state Department of Commerce, the Better Business Bureau, the National Association of Consumer Advocates, and the media may help.
I’ve been the victim of this. Lately, I’ve been getting middle-of-the-night calls asking for this other person. They are trying to catch him unprepared I guess.
Actually, if you ignore them long enough, they will stop.
I was getting these calls for a long time last year. I just screened them (our policy is to NEVER answer “unknown” or “out of area” calls), and let them go to the answering machine. After a year or so, the calls stopped.
The assholes at Capital One credit cards are the worst!
I have a very common name (think John Jones) and I occasionally get some calls, but Capital One was relentless.
I have never had one of their credit cards, but they would call me three and four times a day and getting nastier and nastier every time they called. I must have told them 50 times I am not the person they are looking for.
It took some digging, but I finally called them and got in touch with a manager of some kind and told him I was going to go through every agency on the planet with complaints unless they stopped calling. He swore he would make it so they never called me again - and then he asked, “As long as I have you on the line, would you like to apply for a Capital One card?”
Yeah, right - 'cause your customer service is so great.
So the calls stopped for about a year.
Last week, guess who calls, demanding I pay up?
Yep…the assholes at Capital One.
Here’s my question: AIUI, legally they cannot tell you who they are, but legally they have to stop calling once you tell them they have the wrong number. How do you know who’ve you’ve told they have the wrong number if you don’t know who they are?
For three years I’ve dealt with collectors calling for Rudy Gonzalez at work. Now they’re calling for some chick. When they call I say: “I am hereby notifying you that you have reached the wrong number and that there is no one here by that name.” Seems to cause the guy or gal calling pause and they say they’ll remove our number from their list, but I don’t know if I’m being effective because I don’t know the name of the company calling.
You can try looking up the phone number if you have caller ID, or ask them and see if they’ll tell you. The debt collector that keeps calling just leaves automated messages (that insist I hang up immediately if I’m not Samantha), but I haven’t found more information about them. The only other company that calls has told me who they are in the messages they leave. All of the other calls/messages are just from people, so I really don’t know what legal recourse I’d have.
Just this morning I added a couple of phone numbers to my contact list, so I can better ignore them. “Pocket Dialer” is the worst, since he’s never actually calling me so I can’t talk to him directly and he hasn’t answered my calls so I can ask him to stop it. You’d think he’d notice at some point that he’s constantly calling someone and maybe, y’know, lock his phone. I have no idea who he is.
