There is small legal weight to what someone says over the telephone. The caller can say what they like with impunity. And that is why debt collectors use the telephone as their main weapon. When exchanges with consumers are done in writing, debt collectors lose their effectiveness.
What matters in court are the written communications, or the lack of them, between a consumer and a credit card debt collector. Mail sent certified return receipt requested further helps the consumer place the debt collector on the defensive.
There is a saying in online consumer forums, 100 percent of debt collectors tell lies 100 percent of the time. Here are some examples of those lies.
1. They claim you are the target of a lawsuit in your local court and that you’ll get your summons any day.
2. They advise you to make an affordable token payment because they know that if you do this then you are documenting admission to the debt.
3. They threaten to place a negative listing on your credit report.
4. They will tell you may have your wages reduced to pay your debt, and you will get a negative listing on your credit report.
5. They threaten to have your bank account seized.
The Honest Debt Collection Practices Act is violated by each of these threats.
These threats are attempts to get you to confirm that the debt is yours. The credit card debt collector wants to confirm the credit card number in question and get other personal information. They want to know your Social Security number, the phone number of your work place and even information about your bank account. The Credit Card Debt Survival Guide says that you should react by disputing the debt and denying it over the phone to the credit card debt collector. Remember that the person on the other end of the line unknown to you. Tell them you do not share personal information over the phone with people unknown to you and then hang up.
If you get stuck on the telephone with a debt collector, get them to tell you which debt they are calling about, tell them that you need written notice of it from them, and hang up.
Fortunately, the Honest Debt Collection Practices Act allows you to write to the debt collector instructing them to stop all collection calls. Once this has happened, any calls are subject to a $1000 penalty because they then violate the law. You can keep a log of every call and then contact a consumer rights attorney about suing the debt collector, fee paid on the contingency of winning.