Calls on Sunday & disrespectful
Complaint
Margie
Country: United States
Whoever it was that called, called on Sunday. WRONG! You don't do that if you want a courteous response. And not only that the person that they called was not here and was told so. I'm putting them on my do not call list. He wouldn't not identify the agency who I supposedly owed the bill to or say who it was so I could dispute it or not or say where he was located or identify himself. And he was very disrespectful. I will not offer any information to him because I don't know anything about a bill.
Comments
"the person that they called was not here"
"He wouldn't not identify the agency who I supposedly owed the bill "
He wouldn't not identify the agency so I could dispute it"
"He wouldn't not say where he was located or identify himself."
"I don't know anything about a bill."
All of that makes it more likely to just be fraud.
What phone number?
For example, it was reported used by the Corona Scam in more complaints than BofA or Wells Fargo.
You may have some internal policy against disclosing any information at all without the consumer providing an SSN, but you are basically depending on your anonymous calls interfering with consumers being able to locate you to assert their FDCPA rights.
You do not have the legal right to interfere with consumers' exercising of their various FDCPA rights, such as by demanding their SSN as any condition of identifying yourself.
When asking for information, you must identify yourself as a debt collector, and notify the person called that any information may be used to collect a debt.
Courts have held that just because one section of law places limits on you that may interfere with what you want to do, it does not permit you to violate some other section of law to comply.
(Yeah, how do you not disclose "the debt" to someone who may be a third party? Tough. Not my problem. You chose this business.)
When directly asked, a debt collector must identify the company by it's correct name.
(There is case law on this.)
When asked, it is implied by FDCPA that you must provide your contact address, since consumers have a legal right under FDCPA to dispute, demand validation, or send you a cease communications letter, and it is illegal and deceptive for you to evade the exercise of their legal rights in any way.
Repeated calling of someone who keeps asking you who you are, and you refuse to say, would likely rise to the level of causing a phone to ring for purposes of harassment.
If you keep calling and talking to someone, allegedly because you claim they owe a debt, then you have to send them a letter within 5 days.
There are fraudulent debt collectors, who may have access to limited skip-tracing information, but not full SSNs, who could use even the last 4 digits of a SSN to query Accurint and find out all 9 digits. Disclosing only 4 digits of SSN is not as safe as you imply. In fact, it is unsafe for consumers to assume ANY caller is who they say.