Tips Guides Resources

When the collector calls you an excessive amount of time per day that is one form of harassment. This harassment can be stopped. You have protection under the law against certain abusive tactics that some collection agencies employ.

In the state of Texas, business solicitation calls can not be placed before 8 am or after 8 pm your time. That means that if a collection agency calls you before or after those hours, its harassment. You have the legal right to hang up under this condition.

Another common ploy they use in harassment is to threaten you. This is very serious harassment. These are some of the types of verbal threats they may use against you: saying that they will send out a police officer, or telling you they will freeze your accounts. Any statement that they make like this has to be lawful and they have to really intend to take action. If you receive this treatment you should check the federal and state laws to see if they can make the threat good.

The government is the only “person” able to freeze your accounts. Don’t believe a collector when he tells you he can do this. They may claim to be a lawyer and they better be one if they say they are. Otherwise, the collector has violated a federal law. They use this tactic because it sounds very serious and will intimidate a lot of debtors. Don’t let them intimidate you into forfeiting your right to being treated correctly under the law. Do learn about your rights.

They would have to have filed a warrant and have a court order to bring you in from your home, which is usually not an option for them to exercise.

The most basic way to stop harassment is to place a privacy manager on your phone. If anyone with an 800 number or other specific identity you don’t want calling you calls, then you can set it to make them go through a recorded announcement before they reach you. You can also use caller ID to help screen your calls.

If you want to find more legal options for yourself, you can contact a lawyer in your area or look up the information on the internet. The first law to look for is The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. You may have the grounds for a lawsuit.

Before the collector can try to collect the debt, he must state that it’s an attempt to collect a debt and any information attained will be used for that purpose. He also has to tell you that the call may be recorded.

You can record the collection calls too. Recording the calls is a good measure to take to protect yourself in case the collector is verbally abusive, such as screaming at you, or cursing you. If you do want to record them then you have to tell them you’re recording the conversation so it will be admissible evidence of harassment in court.

Learn the federal and state laws concerning the collection of debts laws. That way you know what the collectors can legally do when attempting to collect a debt.

Tristan Andrews is a freelance author who writes articles about Collection Agencies and Commercial Collections.