A staff reporter at TheStreet.com got harassed by pond scum bottom-dweller debt collectors for money he didn’t owe. He fought back successfully, and shares how to do it.
Rule No. 1 in our quest to give collection agencies the middle finger: Find out if you owe anything. Let’s make these vultures do some work for us. There’s a strategy called debt validation. This is also pretty complicated, and you’ll learn more about it from this Web site than you will from me.
Basically, you demand that the collector provide you with documentation proving that you actually owe them money. If they can’t come up with the right paperwork, you don’t pay them a dime. And they have to stop calling and mailing you. It’s the law, and in this situation they’ll actually have to obey it.
[…] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptA staff reporter at TheStreet.com got harassed by pond scum bottom-dweller debt collectors for money he didn’t owe. He fought back successfully, and shares how to do it. Rule No. 1 in our quest to give collection agencies the middle … […]
It’s a good explanation of a law intended to protect us from bottom-dwellers. FDCPA is not as complicated as it sounds, and there are feee pamphlets available explaining its provisions.
But not all collectors will obey it. Years ago, I had a debt collector tell me I’d better write a check today or she was going to send the marshalls over to take my deposition. This violated several provisions of the Act.
But on the whole, collectors follow the rules, if you prove to them that you know what the rules are.