collection calls/VOIP phone strategy

[DebtorDan]

I just wanted to chime in with what's been working really well for us. Our June cc payments (Amex, ATT Universal/Citi, Chase, and a MBNA Edward Jones) were the last paymments we've made, as we know we're going to file and stopped throwing away good money and started saving for our attorney fee (1500 inclusive of the filing fees for a 7).

Anyway the calls have started. Citi was the first (they're also the piddliest of our creditors, a 1600 debt with a payemt of 34/month). Chase is very active, too.

We have Voice over internet (VOIP) for our landline, viatalk is our provider. You can do custom call routing, so I was able to go to our phone "control panel" on the internet and click a button next to the numbers they were calling from and have them go directly to voicemail, so the phone doesn't even ring.
Of course, when they start calling from a new number, i'll have to go in and change that, but they only change numbers, so far, every one-two weeks).

Our phone service was 199/year (on top of our internet costs), so it's economical (works out to something like 16 something a month) and has turned out handy for avoiding constant calls.

[SinkingFast]

That's probably the kewlist suggestion I've read yet for dealing with Creditor's calls!!

[Keebler]

ViaTalk DANGER!

ViaTalk -- DANGER! It'll cost you $150 to cancel your service!

I too went looking for VoIP and settled on service seperate from our main number. The answering machine handles calls to our regular home phone and friends and family call a new local number for our VoIP line.

The service I setup costs $35 for 12 Months to get a local phone number. Outgoing calls are prepaid and currently 1.5 Cents per Minute. Inbound calls are free. To save money, I can dial out on our regular home phone for local calls and I'll use VoIP for calling long distance.


DANGER!...

Among the services I considered was ViaTalk because of the amazingly low rate. However, there's always a catch and for ViaTalk it's a huge one.

(All of this is found in the Terms of Service for ViaTalk if you can find it.)

The service is billed and prepaid in $199 increments for a year at a time. If you decide to cancel, there's a 50% penalty on the prorated portion of unused service. Plus there's an immediate $50 charge that gets refunded when your adapter is returned.

If you keep your service past the first year -- even by one day, they'll charge your card for the next year's service. If you call the next day to cancel, you'll forfeit 50% of the $199 they charge plus the additional $50 ransom for the adapter.

Canceling this way has instantly cost many previous customers $150 and there are posts on Internet forums complaining about it. The price looks low but it was enough to keep me from being thier customer!

[DebtorDan]

Well, that's a good heads up, I'll have to look into further when renewal time comes along.

I know I was upset when I signed up, because there had been a buy one year, get one year free promo the week before, and it was only 3 free months when i signed up, and the next day it went back to a free year, and they wouldn't give the free year. so they are not the most flexible/customer-friendly of companies to deal with.

i wasn't trying to advertise their services, just report what had worked for us. i don't know if other voip services have the custom call routing thing.

damn, i'll have to watch it when i'm ready to cancel. thanks, again.

[Boscoe]

To anyone else reading this - the simplest, cheapest method is answering machine and screen your calls - don't answer unless you know who it is, and you can call back anyone you really want to talk to.

Hire an attorney and refer all the calls to them.

Also, if you do online banking with any creditor, make sure your phone numbers are NOT in your online profile. Don't make it easier for them to contact you................

[budman66]

My attorney advised to make sure my answering machine idenitifies the phone as mine ( have a message idenitifying myself, and its up to me to return their calls or not, he advised if it were him, he wouldnt, so that if they are not sure the phone is yours, they will try to call relatives and neighbors and employers and all that other stuff. They just started leaving messages, and i dont plan on calling them back.