SSN Overlap With Micronesia Causes Trouble For Woman

stevel writes "Holly Ramer, who lives in Concord, NH, has never been to the Federated States of Micronesia, but debt collectors dun her mercilessly for unpaid loans taken out by a small business owner in that Pacific island nation. Why? Micronesia and other countries in the region have their own Social Security Administrations which gave out numbers to residents applying for US disaster relief loans. The catch is that the Micronesian SSNs have fewer digits than the nine-digit US version, and when credit bureaus entered these into their database, they padded them out with zeros on the front. These numbers then matched innocent US citizens with SSNs beginning with zeroes, as many in northern New England do. The credit bureaus say to call the Social Security Administration, the SSA says call the credit bureaus, the FTC says they can't help, and nobody is taking responsibility for the confusion."

Comments

Why do "credit report agencies" have immunity?

[IBitOBear]

The credit reporting agencies are redistributing negative information they _know_ is untrue. Why isn't this defamation or liable/slander (whichever is the written one)?

It seems like the credit agencies have managed to get some sort of immunity to "it costs money to lie" principle.

Where does this protection come from?

I agree that it has nothing to do with the social security system, since the extra-national numbers don't actually match (it's the credit reporting system that is forcing the reporting entity to "pad" the number with leading zeros) and are completely out of their control.

Like most of our problems in the U.S.A. there is a lack of accountability and personal and/or corporate responsibility at its core.

Eventually someone is going to revolt against someone somewhere.

Re:what i would say

[Shakrai]

If you don't admit to being the debtor they're calling about, they will not give you the opportunity to sue them.

That's why I don't confirm or deny that I'm the debtor. It should go like this:

"Hello, may I speak to Joe Deadbeat?"
"Who is this?"
"May I speak to Joe Deadbeat?"
"Who is this?"

Do this long enough and eventually you'll get some moron that assumes you are the debtor. They will then start trying to collect from you. At this point it isn't real hard to get an address out of them.

For extra points record the phone call (if legal to do so in your state) and hope they are stupid enough to disclose some detail about Joe Deadbeats account. Then track down Joe Deadbeat yourself and offer him the tape so he can sue them for this disclosure. Assuming that you never claimed to be Joe Deadbeat you've broken no laws by letting them hang themselves.

I actually did this once after a collection agency refused to take the hint that my recently assigned phone number didn't belong to the man they were looking for. I started recording their calls and eventually some jackass told me the amount that was owed on the account. I located Joe Deadbeat myself and gave him the recording. He sued them and won a sizable settlement and an agreement that they'd write off the debt.

Better yet... Dominoes!

[gillbates]

When I was younger, I developed the habit of answering the phone, "Mort's morgue - you stab 'em, we slab 'em!" and other sophomoric phrases. After a while, I made a conscious effort to come up with new and interesting tag lines when answering the phone.

My friends and family expected wierd responses when they called. Debt collectors didn't. Sometimes they'd just hang up. Other times they'd apologize for the wrong number. But then some got downright nasty.

Having a relative run into debt problems, there was a period of time of about 6 months when I would receive calls from debt collectors on a regular basis. They always pretended to be someone else - usually someone with authority. In some cases, they impersonated the police, which was illegal.

But it just so happens that one time, I answered, "Dominoes Pizza..." And instead of a familiar family member's voice, it's the debt collector, impersonating a Chicago police officer. So I played along, taking his order (I had worked at pizza places before).

Now, this was after the invention of caller ID. And reverse-lookups on the Internet. And I happened to know that pizza stores routinely re-route orders to another store if the address doesn't fall within their delivery area. I'll leave as an exercise for the reader just what happened next.

Needless to say, they stopped calling.

I can't help but think that at least once, the sweatshop employees at a debt collection agency got a much needed pizza party, courtesy the employee who had the balls to impersonate a Chicago cop.