We all know and fear them

If your account is ever in collections then you know very well what I am referring to. By law in the United States of America, a credit agency is only allowed to call you once per day to make a collection on any debt you may owe. Wait a minute. I know what you are saying, you are getting calls multiple times a day for the same card. Why is this allowed or even possible? What are your rights in this situation. You are even receiving harassing calls at work. How did these "calling creditors" even get those numbers and how do you stop it? Hopefully this article can help.

That all sounds good but..

Wait a minute here, what makes me any kind of authority? The fact is, You may have spoken to me in the past if you were ever in collections because I was the one trying to collect.

Shocking!

I have worked for several credit card companies in the past, which you will know if you read anything else I have put out on the internet. I am not an expert but if you have read this far then you may very well be in collections and it is becoming harder and harder to deal with it. You might be seeking some answers or just looking for some "magical button" that can just make the calls stop. My goal in this article is to help educate you on how this whole system works and maybe if you read carefully, show you how you can make your life a lot less stressful. This article can not remove your debts and I apologize for that. This can only give you a fighting chance to lead a less stressful life.

So why are they calling?

This will a pretty obvious question to most, lets recap anyways. The simple answer is that you owe the credit card company money. You were late on a minimum payment or you went to Best Buy and charged more then what your credit limit allowed on a brand new Panasonic Tv.

Before we start, Credit Rating Debt is a very real consequence. This article is not meant to teach you how to avoid these companies forever. What is outlined here, is how these companies contact you and how to stop it for the short term. If your account charges off you will hear from them and this time it won't be a calling creditor, it will be a calling lawyer. Your debt can't be avoided forever.

Lets Begin

I Made my payments - Why the fees?

You made all your payments and now they are throwing all these fees onto your account? Take a hop over to my other article: Credit Tricks - Fees

Something About a Law?

American law states firmly that a calling creditor (I love this term) can only call once every day, right? Well not exactly. A credit card company can only speak to you once per day for each account that is currently in collections. Wait a minute, isn't that the same thing? Not even close.

If a calling creditor calls your house and speaks to a third party and can't locate the primary or secondary for the account, they haven't spoken to you yet. Your phone number is refreshed and ready to be dialed again. If they get your answering machine and hang up, that was a missed call, expect another in a hour. If they do reach you, and you work out a payment plan (or you swear at them and hang up) then that is considered contact, for that account. If you have any other cards in collections even with the same company, expect a call.

For the Canadian readers, you are miles behind America for credit laws, They can call you until the cows come home and they will.

They are calling my friends and families, This is embarrassing!

Another huge topic that comes up. There are a lot more laws around this as well, more then you would first think. A calling creditor is not allowed to state the reason for calling to any third parties. Third party is anything that is not authorized to have information on the account. I said "anything" because an answering machine is considered a third party. *sigh*

They can still annoy your friends and family asking for you on behalf of x credit company. The quickest solution to prevent this is to have any third parties give the number to reach you, then state the number that was just called is not a number you can be reached at anymore. The goal is to slowly filter out all numbers that the company has on you except one. I will explain why later.

How did they get these numbers? Ever did a cheque by phone? Ever paid a bill online? Ever filled out an card application with a different address or number then the one you currently have? Imagine huge server farms in a basement somewhere. They save everything. This is for your protection more then anything but it doesn't hurt when trying to find you either.

Stop Calling My Work!

This is the worst of all. If you ever did a cheque by phone on your lunch break at a work location, you had to deal with this. Employers picking up the phone to hear people are looking for you every day is never a good thing. To stop these, call the credit card company in question, have them bring up all your accounts and request all these numbers be removed and give them the number you "want" them to reach you at (haha yea right) and what time is best for you. They will mark this down on your account and your number will only enter the "Que" during that time.

Can I Call Block Credit Card Companies?

It won't work. I can not get into details about how these calls are set up by the individual companies. I will tell you right now however, if you ever see a calling creditor reach you from the same number or even the same area code, it is pure coincidence because it will rarely happen.

Stop calling.. Period

There are two ways to go about this. The right way and the wrong way. I do not endorse or reccomend doing these but I have never had to deal with extensive calling. The first way is sending a cease and desist letter to x credit company for each account you have. By law if you request the calls to stop in writing, they must. (In America)

The second method, if you have been reading closely. Is to get the list of available numbers they can call down to one. Your home phone number. Then you could have your number changed. *cough*

Yes, you most certainly could. If you were so inclined. I would not reccomend it though.