Helping Consumers, Helping Debt Collectors

In 1977, the Consumer Affairs Subcommittee added a new title to the Consumer Credit Protection Act entitled the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. The purpose of this bill was to protect consumers from a host of unfair, harassing, and deceptive debt collection practices. However, this purpose was to be accomplished without imposing unnecessary restrictions on ethical debt collectors. As such, this bill was not only supported by consumer groups, labor unions, and State and Federal law enforcement officials, it was also supported by the American Collectors Associations and Associated Credit Bureaus.

The FDCPA’s main objective is to protect consumer against unscrupulous debt collectors. However, what many people don’t realize is that the FDCPA is also designed to protect honest, ethical debt collectors from being competitively disadvantaged by the unlawful debt collectors. The FDCPA aims to even the playing field so that debt collectors, who engage in lawful collection methods, by showing common courtesy and respect to the consumers, are not competitively disadvantaged by the unscrupulous debt collectors.

When a consumer sues a debt collector for their harassment and unlawful debt collection, the consumer partakes in fulfilling the objectives of the FDCPA, by not only protecting the general public, but also protecting the honest and ethical debt collectors who refrain from using these unlawful debt collection practices.

The Three Most Important Steps to Stopping Debt Collection Harassment

Three very important steps to stopping of debt collection are identifying whether you owe a debt or not, reviewing your rights and taking action of your rights have been violated.

The Fair debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) was established by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to ensure fair debt collection practices. The FDCPA is enforced by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and private attorneys governs fair debt collection methods. Any violation of the FDCPA can attract a compensation of $1000 per violation.

The following are the FDCPA Violations by debt collectors:

• Calling you repeatedly at inconvenient times
• Threatening you with serious consequences
• Using abusive language
• Calling your place of work
• Not validating debt
• Demanding more than you owe
• Not disclosing identity
• Contacting third parties about your debt
• Contacting you even after you are represented by attorney
• Harassing you even after receiving cease and desist letter from you
  

Are you a victim of debt collection calls? First find out if the debt collection company has been calling you by mistake. Even if it is calling by mistake or calling to ask for a relative or a friend, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) protects you from any type of harassment from debt collectors. If a debt collector calls you repeatedly and despite your repeated requests, continues to call, the FDCPA rights protect you.

Under the FDCPA rights, you may

• Not take a call from a debt collector
• Hang up on a debt collector
• Inform a debt collector not to call
• Send a letter to a debt collector not to call
• Fix a convenient time to call you
• Not allow debt collector to call you at odd times
• Ask debt collector to validate the debt in writing
• Instruct debt collector not to call at work place
• Send a cease and desist letter to debt collectors to stop further communication
• Engage an attorney for further communication and legal action
• Record the calls from debt collectors (if it is allowed in the state you reside in)
  

Take action if the debt collector has not

• Sent you a written notification of the amount of debt and the name of the creditor within five working days of the call
• Send you Mini Miranda warning
• Has not informed you of your right to dispute the debt within 30 days after you receive the notice, in the warning
• Disclosed in the first communication with you that he or she is attempting to collect a debt
• Informed you that any information obtained will be used for that purpose
• Included the above disclosure If the debt collector’s first communication with you is by phone
• Included the above disclosure in its first written communication with you as well
• Identified himself or herself in all subsequent communication with you