New Collection Tactics?? Anyone else getting these kinds of calls?

I'm assuming it's just a sign of the times; but the past few weeks I've gotten some different calls from companies and they are working my nerves!! I've been Googling the numbers to try to find info on them; and that has helped. But I'm still annoyed! I was wondering if anyone here has been getting these kinds of calls? Or if we're just the lucky ones.

The first one called almost incessantly. I never answer these calls but they got on my nerves enough after a few weeks. I had Googled the number and found it was some kind of collection company. I knew it wasn't for us so I finally did talk to someone. They were looking for a guy who lived at this address sometime before DH started living here! We only know that because we still get junk mail in this guys name! I explained that to the person there and they asked if we were at a particular address; which we are not. So she said we would be removed from the list. It's been a few days now and no calls, Thank the Lord!!

Today we got a new one. This company called and left a message looking for our neighbor they said. And could we please pass on this message to our neighbor if we knew them. I again Googled the number and found out it's a mortgage company and other people have been getting calls with messages like that. I'm assuming it was some kind of collection call because they haven't been able to get in touch with them directly. But why must the bother me!?!?! And why do they assume people know their neighbors?? I've been here for almost 6 years myself and I only know one neighbor by first name! How rude!! (Full House flashback!! )

I asked a friend who works in Business Card Collections if the first company was breaking the law by calling me (being on the Do Not Call Registry). She said that collection companies are pretty much immune to that law! Which I could completely understand if I had done business with these companies on some level; but I haven't! It's just them trying to get ahold of other people! If they aren't breaking the law; I guess there isn't much I can do but keep ignoring the calls. In the past I've tried telling collectors that people didn't live here and they just keep calling anyway.

They are breaking the law. It's called The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA).

It is illegal for them to make false statements, to harrass and annoy you, or to use unfair and deceptive practices.

The following is an excerpt from an article I wrote: http://www.consumercity.org/debt.html

"You have the right to dispute the validity of the debt. Within 5 days after they first contact you, the debt collector is required to send a letter that includes information on how to dispute the debt {This letter is usually a typical collection letter with the part about your rights at the bottom, on the back, or written with a much lighter ink than the rest of the letter}....You have the right to tell a debt collector to cease all communication with you."

I have gotten calls that I didn't answer the phone (caller ID is a Godsend), but I googled and found out they were a collection agency. At least twice they left a message on my answering machine saying this call is for (a woman's first name), you must call so & so immediately, or something to that efffect. It wasn't my name, and there wouldn't be any collection agency looking for me, so I've just been ignoring the calls. Haven't gotten one in a while, so maybe they've gotten a clue.

When I worked for one of the captive auto finance company we had access to some sort of program that when we entered a name/address we would get a response back with a good deal of neighbors names and phone numbers.

If we were unsuccessful trying to get ahold of a customer who was past due on his/her auto loan we would try the neighbors!! Sometimes depending on how much we were trying to find our customer we would offer the neighbors a small cash incentive to call us when they saw the vehicle we were looking for! Or just leave a nice message explaining who we are and what info we were looking for. But I'm sure there are many collectors out in the world who weren't as good as my office was.

Collector for years here.

If someone tells you its a wrong number you have to remove it, but if its a number where its a perpetual answering machine of no answer, unless we find another number thru skip tracing we might keep calling until you tell us its the wrong number.

Calling neighbors is a legal form of skip tracing. I dont agree with it and I myself dont even feel comfortable doing it. They are not supposed to say they are calling about a debt, all they can really say is im trying to reach _____, can you give him this #? if they ask you can state the name of your company and that its about an important business matter. The rule here is after you leave the number with that neighbor OR if the neighbor tells you to quit calling you are not permitted to call that neighbor again. Once you make contact with that neighbor, you are to never call them again.

They also will call people in the same town with the same last names, trying to find the debtor.

The big problem here is if you have a phone number that belonged to someone that owes everyone and their uncle or if you live next to someone like that, you could be getting different calls from all different companies.
Sadly the only thing you can do is get a new number and get it unlisted, or keep a log of the name of the company, who you spoke to and that you told them to stop calling, that way if they do call again you got em!

The guy that we bought our house from obviously is having credit problems right now. We do get the occasional call asking for him. When it first happened, I told him that he didn't live at this address anymore. When it happened again, I told them they had a wrong number. I haven't gotten a call for him in a while.

I actually worked on collection systems in IT years ago. It will amaze you the amount of data they collect on a person in order to track them down. That's one of the reasons you don't want to be on anyone's "list", as innocent as that list may sound. The post office makes a lot of money from selling their "list" to both marketing and collections companies. And ironically, the post office's income from this dropped when specialty companies came in and sold more organized copies of that list to other companies at a price less than buying it from the post office.

It's the sign of the hard economic times and I suspect that collectors are only going to get worse rather than better.

Originally Posted by Momofmany

I actually worked on collection systems in IT years ago. It will amaze you the amount of data they collect on a person in order to track them down. That's one of the reasons you don't want to be on anyone's "list", as innocent as that list may sound. The post office makes a lot of money from selling their "list" to both marketing and collections companies. And ironically, the post office's income from this dropped when specialty companies came in and sold more organized copies of that list to other companies at a price less than buying it from the post office.

It's the sign of the hard economic times and I suspect that collectors are only going to get worse rather than better.

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Ive worked in a skip tracing department before and its unreal how many different ways you can search for someone online and find out so much about them.

Myspace, Facebook...anything is fair game. Google your 1st and last name in quotes and see what you come up with.

After all i learned i dont register to any online forums or groups under my real name because i mean even if you have a stalker and they find out you belong to a message board under a certain name they can find out so much about you.

Then the company had special data bases that you pay to use, and one of them was the phone numbers that were pulled from various things the debtor would fill out that had nothing to do with their debt. Best thing to do when a store or anything for that matter asks for your # is just put unlisted, unless of corse its super important.