What to tell collection agency about letter for another person mailed to me?

[GoingDown]

I get it. I do. I certainly wouldn't want to deal with unwanted calls all day either but if it were to become that much of a problem, my solution would be to simply change my phone number (some providers will do it for free if you tell them you're being harassed)

As a self-employed person, changing my phone number would ruin me. I would lose most of my customers.


rather than investing a bunch of time writing C&D letters.

Use email to contact the debt collector. It's fast, free, and usually works just as well as sending a letter through the mail in terms of getting them to stop calling you.


Knock on wood, I've had my cell phone number for 8 years, through a divorce and Chapter 7, and it's never come to that. The only time I ever had any sort of issue was when I had Comcast Voice service(quite possibly the world's biggest spam magnet) and my ex-wife's debt collectors were rather eager to track her down. I even had one skip tracer with a heavy Texas accent leaving me voicemails claiming I'd find out what happens to car thieves after my ex skipped out on her auto loan and stashed the car. Mind you, my name wasn't even on the loan.

Yes, exactly. This is what skip-tracers do all the time. They can easily find the phone number associated with an address using a proprietary database, and this includes most cell phone numbers as well. If you ever use your cell phone as a contact number for any type of credit account, or even a checking account, even if it is not in any way associated with the account they are trying to collect, it will eventually make its way into a database and they can find it. And so, if you use your street address for a checking account mailing address, that database will match up your phone number with the street address, and give the skip tracer your phone number to call.



What I have taken away from these experiences is to 1) not have a landline same here, I dumped my landline, too and 2) not give my phone number to people I don't know I agree. I do the same thing. I have a Google Voice number that serves as my "number of record" for third parties I use Google Voice for almost everything now, too. Oddly enough, that very rarely gets junk calls either.

Google Voice works great for me, too. They screen out most junk calls automatically. And if a debt collector continues to call you, all you have to do is block their number from calling you, or use the Google call screening feature which makes them identify themselves using their own human voices, before the call will go through to you, which stops most auto-dialer calls from coming in.

[joshuagraham]

Ah yes, but you will find many stories from people on the internet where they unwittingly answered the phone when a debt collector called for the previous owner of the phone, and even after telling the debt collector to stop calling them, they kept receiving phone calls from the debt collector for sometimes months or even years. If you don't put it in writing-- by sending them a cease and desist communications letter-- they will often keep calling for that previous owner of the phone.

And once a debt collection letter comes in the mail, it is the beginning of the collection process. Eventually, they will probably do some skip-tracing and use their database and get the phone number associated with that address. So, they will probably eventually start calling you on the phone for this previous occupant, and your phone number will be associated with that person, and you will get collection calls for them.

So, it is best to head it off at the pass.

I had someone calling my pay as you go cell phone asking for someone named Frank, and they called and called and called, until I sent them an email telling them to stop calling me and that I do not even know who Frank is, and that they have the wrong phone number. Telling them on the phone to stop calling me had no effect.

It has to be in writing.

I guess it's no big deal if you don't mind getting calls from debt collectors asking for someone you don't even know.

I called from my internet telephone, and gave my name as Joe Blow.

I'm wondering if skip-tracing can be done for an internet telephone number.

[frogger]

I'm wondering if skip-tracing can be done for an internet telephone number.

Yes.