A few weeks ago, I began getting several calls a day from a collection agency – starting early in the morning. (GRRRR!) What they do is have a machine call you and leave a message on your voicemail to call them back.
The message just says that this is “the corporate office” and leaves a number.
Well, I hate being woken up early in the morning, so I got right on the phone.
Apparently what happened is, some guy whose name I have never got clearly went to a check cashing center and got a payday loan. I guess he pulled a phone number out of his ass to give them, and it happened to be mine.
So I told the person on the phone that it wasn’t me, I never heard of this guy, and please stop calling me.
The next day I had the same conversation with another person.
The third day, with a third person.
Finally, they did stop calling me, but now they are sending multiple texts to my phone – “ITEM RETURNED UNPAID CALL XXX-XXX-XXXX.”
So: I want to know two things. One obviously is how to get them to cut it out; but even more importantly, I’m wondering if this debacle connected with my phone number is going to screw up my credit somehow?
Wow, thank you, Fear Itself! I shall endeavor to discover a mailing address for these guys. That is very useful information.
Does anyone know if this could affect my credit, simply by associuation with my phone number? Obviously, all the other data associated with this debt would be different – name, DOB, SSN, etc. But I know your phone # is an integral part of your profile.
You’d have to pull your credit report to see if there’s anything erroneous.
But yeah, here’s more about Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. They can call you once to see if you know the guy, and if you don’t, they’re supposed to knock it the fuck off.