Collection agency--wrong number

Factual Questions
1

We’ve had our phone number for about six months, and occasionally get wrong-number calls, probably for the person who used to have this number. I got a call this morning from a fellow who asked for a first name, I told him he had a wrong number, and he said, “Last name X?” I repeated that it was a wrong number, and he said, “Spelled blahblahblah,” I repeated again that it was a wrong number and hung up.

From his persistence, I presume he was a debt collector. I’m sure people lie all the time and say that it’s a wrong number when collection agencies call, but this is a genuinely wrong number. I’ve heard stories from friends about collection agencies calling for someone who didn’t live there but wouldn’t stop calling. If they call here again, what recourse do I have to make them stop? I’ve looked up some debt collection information, but all the info I’ve found so far is aimed at the person who actually owes the debt. Since I’m not the person who owes money, this is more an annoyance than anything else, but still, I’d prefer to not have them calling me.

2

I understand the frustration. I’ve had my number for four years, but still get wrong numbers every week, probably because this immediate area has three different exchanges (the 3 digit number in the middle) with the first two identical. I share last 4 digit identity with a loan company and a radio station.

I have had collection calls for somebody else, but I don’t recall just this situation. When I do, I tell them how long I’ve had this number, and ask them if they’ve checked directory assistance. I tell them, further, that I am not acquainted with anyone by that name (true, I’m not).

I’ve never had a repeat call from those. People calling the loan company or the station are sometimes more stubborn. :frowning:

I have had other calls for people with my same last name, and I simply tell those callers that they’ve got the wrong tyger.

3

If you have Caller ID, make note of the number and see if they call again. If they call again, tell them and be more forceful with them rather than just hang up on them. If they call a third time (and you’ve documented each call), now take the gloves off. Be very assertive and direct and tell them you consider the calls to be harassment and you will be contacting the police.

4

You have my sympathy, Geobabe. I’ve had this number for nine years, and the woman who had it before has scammed every business in central PA. Anymore, I ask the name of the caller, the company whom they represent, obtain a phone number, and then advise them that I’m not Person X, she hasn’t had this number in close to a decade, and if they bother me again, I’ll have them charged with harrassment by communication. Very few calls, anymore. :smiley:

5

It’s very simple.

Get the company name and phone number. They will give this to you because they need the person to contact them.

Call up the company. Inform them that the person at that address has moved and you are not them.

It sucks if the last person who had your number was a real deadbeat because you might be getting calls from multiple collection agencies. My sophomore year in college, some Turkish guy lived in our appartment the previous year. He rang up 10,000s of credit card bills and never paid them. We used to get calls every week.

Of course it didn’t help matters much that we would put on goofy accents and fuck with them every other call in hopes of getting a repo guy to take away our university issued furniture.

6

I can take this problem a step further.

Guy who had my phone number before me (217-xxx-xxxx) made thousands of dollars worth of calls to a 900 number in 1999. Apparently he disputed it with the phone company, or something, because a third party is trying to collect the debt on behalf of the 900 number operator and not the phone company itself.

Anyway, some debt collection agency sees my name attached to 217-xxx-xxxx and decides that I owe the money. I politely told the guy that in 1999 I lived in another state and the my telephone number at the time was 417-yyy-yyyy. Too damn bad, sez the guy. My number is xxx-xxxx, the calls were made from xxx-xxxx, ergo I owe the money.

I took a letter from the Attorney General of Illinois to put a stop to this.

Bottom line is, debt collectors are sharks and will not let a simple matter of someone claiming that they have a wrong number from trying to dissuade them. Get Caller ID.

7

I may be missing something here, but isn’t every mention so far of a ‘wrong number’ actually a correct number, just out-of-date information? So telling the agency they have the wrong number won’t help, because even if they do double-check against the address and the out-of-date name, they’ll assume you’re telling them rubbish?

Better to tell them the exact date (as far as you know) the named person left the property, and anything else you know about them. (WAG that the agency might be restricted from asking for such information, but can’t ignore it if you volunteer it.) There’s no point being antagonistic with them if all they’re doing is trying to find the person who owes the money. And I presume none of us here condone running away from our debts. So why not help?

8

It doesn’t have to be the same address. Many people, myself included, have been given recycled phone numbers that used to belong to someone else, at a completely different address. This can be a real pain when 90% of your calls are actually for the deadbeat or sleazy company that used to have your phone number.

9

The phone number isn’t tied to the address in any way. When someone gets their service disconnected, that number goes back into the pool and can be assigned to anyone else living within the same area code.

Plus, even if by some chance this woman the collection guy is looking for used to live in the apartment I do now, I’ve absolutely not the faintest clue where she lives now, nor any way to find out. The leasing office would never give out that information to a private citizen.

To top that off, it’s the collection agency’s job to find this person, not mine, and frankly, harassing me so I’ll do their job for them is a very poor way to go about it.

I do appreciate the responses so far, but what I would like to know is, are there specific legal penalties for a collection agency who harasses someone who just happens to have the former phone number of someone who owes them money? I want to know what, if anything, I can threaten them with if they keep bugging me.

I’ve looked up the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, and it does address contacting third parties, but I’m not certain how this applies to me. Perhaps someone with more expertise can help me decipher the legalese here.

Section 805b says: “COMMUNICATION WITH THIRD PARTIES. Except as provided in section 804, without the prior consent of the consumer given directly to the debt collector, or the express permission of a court of competent jurisdiction, or as reasonably necessary to effectuate a postjudgment judicial remedy, a debt collector may not communicate, in connection with the collection of any debt, with any person other than a consumer, his attorney, a consumer reporting agency if otherwise permitted by law, the creditor, the attorney of the creditor, or the attorney of the debt collector.”

Now, the relevant part of that Section 804 referred to says this: “Any debt collector communicating with any person other than the consumer for the purpose of acquiring location information about the consumer shall… (3) not communicate with any such person more than once unless requested to do so by such person or unless the debt collector reasonably believes that the earlier response of such person is erroneous or incomplete and that such person now has correct or complete location information.”

What defines “reasonably”? Section 813 lays out penalties for not complying with the Act, but can they just say, “Well, we were just SURE that she knew that gal but wasn’t saying”?

10

I would imagine that just reciting that portion of the act over the phone to the offending caller might well prove effective.

11

Isn’t it a bit premature to quote the federal law on debt collection before determining if the caller was in fact a debt collector?

12

His behavior was highly suggestive of the practices of debt collectors, the way he kept persisting in trying to ask for this person in different ways. A regular wrong-number caller isn’t usually going to start spelling the person’s name after already being told twice that they’d gotten a wrong number. Now, there are a lot of strange people out there, so I suppose it’s not entirely out of the question, but let’s just assume that I’m correct in my guess that it was in fact a debt collector and go from there.

13

About a year ago, someone used my sister’s Social Security number to get a fraudulent credit card. The name wasn’t hers (it was a man’s name), and the address was no place that she had ever lived. Needless to say, they wracked up a huge debt which they didn’t pay for. The debt got sold to a collection agency, which tried to go after my sister for the debt. Never mind that she had filed a police report about the identity theft, and contacted the issuing bank. The collection agency just wanted someone to fork over the money.

After talking to a lawyer that our parents know, she sent a certified letter to the collection agency telling them that she wasn’t responsible for the debt, and any further attempts to contact her or any other member of the Dice clan would be treated as harrassment. (They had also called my parents.) And if they tried to damage her credit rating, they would get sued. She hasn’t heard from them since.

14

I know you’re the expert, but I’ll chime in to dispute this.

Our landlord lives in another country now. We’ve rented his house (in Atlanta) five years. He had a fraudulent charge tagged to his account years before that. He disputed it, but never really resolved it. Our phone number is different from his old one.

His first name is very unusual in the US. For the purpose of anonymity for the innocent, I’ll call him ‘Fabio’ (Not his real name, but it’s an Italian doozy).

One day the phone rang:

ME: hello?
Bottom feeding scum: FABIO!?
ME: (taken aback, blindsided) Fabio doesn’t live here anymore… Can I…
BFS: Fabio, I know that’s you! How have you been?
ME: Fabio lives in (other country) now, sorry.
BFS: Fabio, I know it’s you. I recognize your voice! How ya been?
ME: I am NOT Fabio, and this is my new phone number. Why are you calling?
BFS: You tell that (^%%&% we’re going to get our money! Tell Fabio to call our lawyers immediately to clear up this debt and save his credit.

The landlord was scammed in another country a decade ago and the vendor added two zeros to his credit card bill after he left.

He will NOT pay it.

The BFS looked up the address and did a backwards lookup on the phone number. Haven’t heard from him since (2 years ago).

I guess my point is that the phone number WILL be tied to the address if they want to try that route. Didn’t work on me, but the initial blindside is fast and furious.

15

Sometimes it isn’t a 'wrong" number. You have a listing of “G. Bush”- they will call you sometimes even if the dudes name isn’t “George” or even starts with a G. Even if the dudes name was “Bushy”- after all- what have they got to lose? Sure it’s illegal, but they violate the Fair debt Collectiosn act every 5 minutes. They’re criminal scum. Usually, any debt that goes to this scum isn’t valid anyway. Oh, and sometime they know it isn’t valid, but they figure if they keep hounding you, you might pay. :mad:

16

Yes, your address can be looked up from your phone number, but that’s not what I was talking about. The phone number we have used to belong to someone else, and a couple of people were assuming that we also reside at that person’s old address, which is not, as far as I know, the case. When a phone number gets recycled, it can be given to anyone within a certain geographical area, not the next person to live at that address.

17

It is a very wrong number. I suppose I should have made it more clear, the name isn’t even similar to mine.

18

Probably best not to go in with all guns blazing, yes.

19

To who? The $5.50 an hour anonymous drone on the other end of the line?

20

I’m not sure they even make the $5.50 an hour. Don’t most of them work on straight commission?

I’ve been on the wrong end of these calls. It is very tough to get them to stop. These people are trained to ignore everything you say and just keep asking for payment. Even telling them the person doesn’t live there anymore doesn’t seem to help. They assume you’re a roommate covering up for them. These numbers are fed into an autodialer and the collectors don’t tend to delete them. They probably figure by calling back again, they might catch the “person they’re looking for” unaware.

They will finally stop…until a new collection agency buys the account and begins the process all over again.