Unwanted call from GC Services
Complaint
Avrina
Country: United States
"GC Services" has called me and asked to go to my neighbor house and ask them to call this company. I asked who they are, and they refused to tell. Just said that they are trying to contact my neighbors regarding a personal matter. I didn't feel comfortable doing what they asked me, so I hung up.
I just found out that this company is a collection agency. Is it a common practice to call neighbors and ask them for this kind of favors? Or was it a scam call?
I just found out that this company is a collection agency. Is it a common practice to call neighbors and ask them for this kind of favors? Or was it a scam call?
Comments
This type of pressure leads to FDCPA violations and cutting of corners which are illegal and immoral. The majority of GC Services has collectors that received complaints on a weekly basis and FDCPA complaint forms was part of the weekly paperwork when I worked there. Most of problems you write about could be avoided if people who are follow some simple rules.
1. Know your rights
2. Go to the FDCPA site and study your rights under both state and federal law
3 Print a copy of FDCPA Act
4 Know the difference between first party collections and third party collections
5 Know what you can do if feel that collection agency or the collector is violation of the law
6. You can sue and collect damages from both the collector and collection agency for violations of FDCPA laws
7. You have a two limitations on debt
a. The credit reporting time limit is the max amount of time credit bureaus can report delinquent debts on your credit report
b. The statute of limitations starts on the last date of activity on the account. (Keep in mind this can be different from the date the account went past due.) Your credit report will include the account's last date of activity. You can send a letter to Collection agency to request that they remove the debt from you credit report
Last KNOW YOUR RIGHTS
Tell them you'll do it for a fee.
Or you can tell them something strange like you're afraid to go over as the police are always there, or tell them the house was torn down so another neighbor could have a bigger yard.
If it is an apartment, tell them there's no such number.
The general manager of GC Service is Eric Bernhagen. Tell them if it is so damned important, put him on the line.
gcservices.blogspot.com has more…
GC Services called me 5 times, the last time I was in the middle of a job interview. Somebody named Dirk Bradford owes some money. And apparently they seem to think the number I've had for the last 3 years is his. For the last 6 months I have received calls from a variety of credit agencies asking for Dirk Bradford. I'd change my phone number, but then I'd probaby have the same issue, and as I'm looking for work that would be really inconvenient.
GC services is rude and refuses to fix the phone number issue, they'll probably sell the account, and next week I'll be getting more of Dirks calls.
In my opinion about 25% of the numbers you guys call are no longer valid. I don't know what service you use for your information but it is flawed.
I will give you an example. An ex boyfriend of mine goes through about 10 phone numbers a year. You can also buy a temporary number and use it then Discard it. I give out fake temporary numbers to guys I meet. When I am done with it or want a new number i pay for a new number. Then the old number gets picked up by someone who buys a new cell phone.
This is life. Many times you are calling a number that has been dropped and assigned to someone new.
I will end by saying I once gave a temporary number to HR at my job instead of giving them my cell number. So if you assume that the number is permanent because someone used it to apply for credit or at their job then you are wrong again. Temp numbers are everywhere.
The other way to get them to stop calling is to swear. One guy called me asking for the usual guy who does not have this number. I said "well he's not here, you know that but you must have liked sucking his dick so much you just have to dial the number" and that was pretty much the end of it.
Sloppy identification and deceptive collection practices have resulted in increasing "debt polution" spilling over into the lives of people who do not owe the alleged debts. This is becoming an increasingly serious problem, corrupting the accuracy of the credit databases, and clogging courts with fraudulently filed lawsuits.
It remains to be seen whether the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency will do a better job than FTC at policing sloppy and corrupt debt collectors.
FDCPA statutory damages have been at $1000 for the last 30 years, resulting in the penalties for illegal collection practices becoming increasingly irrelevant. The debt collectors have responded accordingly, feeling free to threaten, lie, and cheat with impunity.
Owner and his address is:
Donald L Stevens
26073 Meade Road
Parsons Kansas 67357
Donald L Stevens
26073 Meade Rd, Parsons, KS 67357
620-421-5067
Anyone can find this info by calling the secretary of state where the business is located and following the trail. It took me about an hr. to find this owner scumbag. They do go to alot of effort to hide their identity for good reason. If I were to call them and leave messages with their neighbors, they may try to look me up too. The owners need to know what a crappy company they own.
It attempts to misdirect you away from disputing a debt you already suspect is phony, toward having to supposedly file a fraud complaint with the police over this allegedly fraudulent account.
Most people will not file criminal complaints against a relative, even more so when they don't even believe they have committed a crime, so faced with what they believe is no alternative, they may pay even unowed, unproven "debts", just because someone screamed false accusations at them on the phone.
It's basically an attempt to blind-side you with a "con", and as you found, he threw first one story, then another, at you, adeptly switching when the first try didn't work. Surprisingly, this deceptive tactic is used rather frequently even by employees of large national collection agencies.
Widespread abusive collection and harassment.
Repeated harassing phone calls, often exceeding 10 per day, with repeated requests to cease calling the wrong number ignored.
Reaging dates on credit report entries.
Systematic use of "sloppy skip-tracing" to send bills to people with no real basis to believe they owe the alleged debt.
Widespread deceptive talk-offs to convince people they cannot dispute unowed debts.
Deliberate use of posting of false collection accounts to credit reports to extort payment.
Use of deception and abuse is a tool to evade disputes and validation. Combined with sloppy skip-tracing, this results in fraud.
Gross distortion of FTC "id theft" statistics due to deceptive debt collector talk-offs.
Pretty much everything FDCPA prohibits is routinely violated, as if there is nothing wrong as long as you get away with it, and even then, it's just a "mistake", or at worst, throw a "bad apple" under the bus.
These are not just the actions of a few "bad apples", as the industry likes to claim. They are the actions of the institutions organized and set up to allow and encourage them, while maintaining deniability. That is no "accident".
When several separate functions of the company (initial abusive calls, excessive autodialer use, erroneous skip-tracing, erroneous credit reporting, ignoring disputes, evading validation, etc) fail to comply, it doesn't point to "bad apples". It points to a process deliberately designed to ignore the law, to negligently cut corners for profit while ignoring the cost and injury to innocent parties, to basically play "chicken" with the law knowing that in most cases the risk is only a marginal cost of business.
This is the problem created by the large market in old "debt" (even "included in bankruptcy"), that is bought and sold for little value and with little documentation, and collected on with little regard for accuracy, when it reaches the hands of people with no integrity, to whom it is worth the most.
The result is a perverse economic engine producing abusive and fraudulent collection sctivity guaranteed to spill over and damage even the rest of us who do pay our bills.
Get an attorney.
You might try www.naca.net