Legal Question in Credit and Debt Law in North Carolina
harrasment of debt collectors.
I have been receiving calls from various debt collectors in the past year from a man who has the same name as I do and lives in the same area. The collectors assume that I am the person and automattically tell me that I owe them money. I keep having to explain over and over that I am not the person. I have to keep an eye on my credit to assure that it is not being misused by this person whom I do not know. I am having to think about changing my phone number and it is causing me a lot of stress. What can I do legally to stop the annoying calls and hold this person responsible for the stress that his unpaid debts and calls from the debt collectors trying to get in touch with him is causing? I recieved a call last night at 8:00 pm and the agency did not even verify that I was the person before they started asking when I was going to pay them. They only are going by names in the phone book. Its really annoying and it sets me on edge. I keep having to wonder if this person, because he has the same first and last name as me, is going to ruin my credit in some way. What can I do?
1 Answer from Attorneys
Re: harrasment of debt collectors.
The FDCPA requires bill collectors to make sure they have the right person and that they are collecting the legal amount of money. Collectors have the right to try and locate debtors and this sometimes results in calls to the wrong person because of inaccurate information and record-keeping. Although contacting the wrong person is not a violation of the FDCPA, continuing to call that same person after being informed they have the wrong person is a serious violation.
You need to do a couple of things. Start to log every call - time, date, name of person, name of company, address - etc. Then tell them it is the wrong person and follow up with a letter (you can do a search of fair debt collection to get some samples). If that same debt collector calls again, then you may have grounds for a lawsuit and you may be entitled to some penalties.
The other thing to do is to check your credit regularly - get your free credit report and make sure there is nothing strange on there.
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