Mayling says We had filed for our state max in small claims $7,500. and the website itself says *you can sue them for statutory damages. *. Wiki says that Aggrieved consumers may also file a private lawsuit in a state or federal court to collect damages (actual, statutory, attorney’s fees, and court costs) from third-party debt collectors. The FDCPA is a strict liability law, which means that a consumer need not prove actual damages in order to claim statutory damages of up to $1,000 plus reasonable attorney fees if a debt collector is proven to have violated the FDCPA.[30] The collector may, however, escape penalty if it shows that the violation (or violations) was unintentional and the result of a “bona fide error” that occurred despite procedures designed to avoid the error at issue.
If the statutory damages are capped at $1,000.00, then what was the $7,500.00 comprised of?
I would imagine that it was multiple offenses. Personally, I’d have gone with a lawyer even if I had to let him/her take a cut of my winnings, if it meant that the company had to pay more in fines.
These companies aren’t going to quit unless they get hit in the pocketbook often enough that it’s no longer cost effective for them to continue their wicked ways.
I have had the same problem with various collection agencies. Sallie Mae was the worst offender. They robo-called numerous times daily for different accounts, none of which was me. My favorite name they called for was Tanya Batlong. I had to make many increasingly unfriendly calls to get them to drop my number.
Then another one whose company name I cannot recall, would robo-call leave a message for Tom Lopez, and that if I (my voicemail) did not hang up immediately, I (my voicemail) agreed that I was indeed Tom Lopez and acknowledged that I did indeed owe the debt and I had better call them asap. I did, and in one very ugly phone call stopped their nonsense.
Now, it’s Portfolio Recovery, looking for Tony Long. I’ve answered once and informed them that I am not Tony Long and I owe them no money and that they need to get my number out of their system. Still they are calling, so looks like I get to have more phone fun with them. :mad:
I’ve been getting more and more of these lately too. I never tick (and always make sure to untick) the box saying that other companies are free to call me, and only two or three companies have my landline number anyway because it was out of order for so long. Still I’ve been getting two or three calls a day in the week or so that my landline phone’s been working again. The numbers don’t show up and can’t be blocked.
But there are different rules binding debt collection agencies; in the UK, they are not allowed to call your relatives and threaten to take away their belongings for your debt. They are only allowed to call you or numbers you claimed were yours and only then if they are still yours.
If a previous tenant had debts, you are not obliged to send them legally certified copies of your tenancy agreement to prove you are not them, as one debt collection agency repeatedly asked when I moved into this flat.
I know this because I have a debt that I very strongly contest and want to go to court with, and they have been absolute arseholes about it. They’ve repeatedly breached the data protection act, just for a start - there is no way they could have got the various numbers they’ve called without doing so. They claimed, for example, that I put my GF down as my next of kin back in 1994, when I was 18, she was 14 and we’d never met. She was, however, my next of kin years later, though not connected to anything financial; they cannot have got her number legally.
But they never actually call me even though I tell people to give these bastards my number and have them call me because I really really want to go to court (but I can’t start it from my end). Instead they call the other people again, get given my number again, and don’t call me.
I’ve had years and years of this, so excuse the rant.
I had a call like that a while back. I told them that I knew how to get in touch with the folks they were after. I then asked what my share of the cash would be if my assistance led to recovery. Turned out to be $0. So I hung up.
Given the behaviour I and others have experienced, they’re not even bound by the rules that do bind them. How do you hold them accountable? It’s obvious by the questions they ask that they are debt collectors, but they will reveal nothing about themselves that will allow you to report them.
Not if you have a reliable answering machine. A potential employer is not going to hold it against you if you don’t happen to be home when they call. Unless of course you’ve made arrangements in advance for a phone conversation.
With most of them, if you look up the relevant laws in your country and write to them citing the laws they’re breaking, they will stop. The problem is that the debt will often be passed around from one company to another, who will then break the laws anew, but you can usually get a break for a while.
How do you write to them if they won’t reveal the name or location of the company or the number they are calling from? I’ve found they hang up on you if you ask for this information, though it doesn’t stop them from calling again.
Then there’s not a lot you can do, I guess, but it’s also then difficult for them to get any money out of you.
But I know what you, mean; it does happen. One company used to call my mother’s phone (a number they’d obtained illegally) and claim they were calling me - who’d never lived there - to discuss a ‘business opportunity.’ I had no idea who they were and they never left any number to call them back on; it was only when I walked my mother through the 1471 routine to retrieve their number that I found out who they were. Really quite bizarre behaviour.
You can Google phone numbers to find out who’s called you, but obviously only if they haven’t blocked number sending. At least if they write to you by snail mail you’ve got a much better chance of finding out who they are and getting them off your back for a while.