harassment at work
Complaint
james martin
Country: United States
1-3-12 agent smith calls me at work and the person answering the phones in the office gave me the message so i call them at the number givin to me 1-800-695-7444 extension 4605 i tell them to not call me at work i will be fired so then i get a call again on 1-11-12 from carol at 1-800-685-7444 ext 4604 they keep calling me at work and if i get fired they will never see there money harassing me at work i thought was against the law
Comments
A debt collector is defined as anyone collecting on an allegedly delinquent consumer debt, originally due to another party.
Thus third party collection agencies (and also actual law firms) routinely handling consumer account collection of delinquent accounts are defined as debt collectors by FDCPA and must comply.
FDCPA prohibits deceptive, harassing, abusive, or threatening collection by debt collectors.
"Agent Smith" is an attempt to imply you might be "arrested" or "prosecuted". Probably deceptive, as normally unpaid debt is just a civil matter.
Other complaints against that phone number make similar allegations to your complaint, including routine use of the "Agent" title, and threats of "jail", or implied threats of a lawsuit (asking for "your attorney" to call back), or "changing your life" (whatever that implied threat means).
https://whocallsme.com/Phone-Number.aspx/8006957444
Original creditors are not debt collectors, but in some states, they may still have to comply with regulations similar to third party debt collectors. For example, California's Rosenthal Act applies to both debt collectors and original creditors.
Looks like they may be routinely setting themselves up for a lawsuit, thinking they are safe due to being an original creditor rather than a debt collector. If they so much as outsourced their collections hiring, or bought the account from another bank after it went delinquent, that would change, and as mentioned above, state law might make them vulnerable as well.
As it is affecting your employment, run this buy a consumer attorney. If you notify them that you are represented by an attorney, they must restrict their contact to your attorney. You might try www.naca.net to find an attorney in your state.
Even though they might in fact be hired by the original creditor, once they even falsely claim or imply otherwise, they are now "collecting on a delinquent debt originally owed to another", even when in truth its owed to their employer.
FDCPA is designed to provide for consumer validation of debt collected by third parties, so when they step into being a "third party" even through deception, they create the very uncertainty over validity of the alleged debt that FDCPA was designed to remedy.
Furthermore, they would have no exemption from being a third party debt collector that legitimate law enforcement investigating a complaint would have, as they are not law enforcement, only pretending to be.
Deceptively pretending to be a third party while demanding payment on a delinquent debt, is sufficient to invoke consumers' validation rights under FDCPA, along with the FDCPA prohibitions against deception.
What a tangled web we weave...
It sounds more like a collection agency tactic.
www.ftc.gov
www.consumerfinance.gov
The funny thing for me is..... It wasn't me he was trying to contact, it was someone else that I have no clue who that person is. Now if I knew how to contact the person he was attempting to contact, I would forward her the voice mail he left me. I'm sure there are laws about giving out too much information to the wrong person about bills someone owes.