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Debt Collectors Sneaking Robocall Exemptions Into Budget Bill
TCPALaw writes: Hate robocalls? In July, the FCC tightened the rules regarding robocalls to cell phones, especially debt collection calls (in particular limiting calls to wrong numbers or to anyone who is not the debtor). Now the debt collection industry is getting their revenge by sneaking in a massive exemption (see section 301 on page 10 to the PDF) to the the FCC's rules that would expressly permit debt collection robocalls to cell phones (and even collect calls!) for student loans, mortgages, taxes, and any other debt owed or guaranteed by the government. Time to make a few phone calls myself to some senators. The Senate switchboard is (202) 224-3121 or go to senate.gov to find the number for your senators. This may come up for a vote in 24 hours or less.
That's OK. ARSONBOT technology is improving by leaps and bounds.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Just don't answer your phone for any number that you don't recognize; if it's really important they'll leave a voicemail message. Debt collectors and scumbags don't leave messages, typically; there, problem solved.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Of course...
--
BMO
We've signed away privacy, we've signed corporations into perpetual existence so they do not fall; but I'm to give a shit cause a robot is calling you per minute because you didn't pay what you owe at blockbuster or whatever.
"Blah blah you..." no phone that isn't screened before bounced to me. Number given to no-one. If bothered too much, reverse annoy phreaking gets you on do not call lists faster and better than the do not call list.
This isn't about debt collector calls as a whole, but robocalls. Robocalls are terrible. Debt collector calls might be annoying, but that's the cost of not paying on time.
People running away from their debt, this is why the country goes to shit.
No. I don't think that's a leading factor. Debt collectors not following the rules, that's not a reason for the country "going to shit either", but it doesn't help.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
If you truly understood how debt collection really works, you might not be so passé about it.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Wrong number debt collector robo calls were the reason they were banned to begin with. It's bad enough dealing with someone who barely speaks English calling you, trying to explain to them that you just got a new phone and you're not Bubba/Shalanqua/Willie and that you're not related to not have you even heard of Bubba/Shalanqua/Willie, and the caller should update their records before selling to the next credit collections agency.
The fact that bankruptcy trustees and credit counseling services are just increasing by ten fold
Citation needed
>exercising your rights is leading to moral hazard and societal downfall
No.
Go lick corporate boots elsewhere.
--
BMO
I agree, all those corporations bailing on their contractual obligations to fund their pensions and pay their employees by using bankruptcy to void their contracts rather than caring about their debts are wrecking the economy.
I'd do the same if I could exchange millions of dollars in advertising for my senators for a law that lets me "reorganize" my debts and come out with no obligations and all my assets intact instead of forcing me to liquidate everything but maybe my house, but alas, I am a mere human, not a Person with all of the rights and privileges of such.
After I was out of work for two years (2009-2010), and preparing to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2011, a debt collector got nasty by ignoring my letter not to call and kept calling me. So I decided to play hardball. I kept hitting redial to tie up his phone line until he agreed to talk to me. After ten hang ups in five minutes, he finally gave in and stopped calling me.
The phone still rings, and you need to stop what you are doing and check it. With robocalls, they just don't stop either. They call day after day after day because it doesn't cost anything. So message or no (and they do leave messages) they'll just keep bothering you for years.
I had that problem with a home phone line that I had to ditch. The number it was assigned belonged to someone who had skipped on medical bills. Well these retarded collectors would just NOT get the message that I wasn't the person and didn't know the person. Nope, just keep calling back every single day. I finally had enough of the thing ringing all the time and just had it disconnected.
Also some places you have to answer the phone. We had real issues with this at work. Our helpdesk line kept getting calls from debt collectors looking for some employee who had worked here 20 years ago. Got real old telling them to fuck off, and having to tie up the line taking the calls.
We're constantly having to try and stop bad (and usually hidden or obscure) legislation from passing with no real long term way of preventing it in the first place. So what if we manage to prevent it this time? They'll just try again next year with a new (and probably unrelated) bill to latch onto.
unless such call is made solely to collect a debt owed to or guaranteed by the United States
This amendment only effects collection of debts owed to the US Government. Normal credit card, car loans, etc don't get the exemption.
Bottom line is: If you are having trouble paying back a loan, talk to the lender. The absolute worst thing to do is trying to avoid them.
Very simple solution — get the government out of the loans-business altogether. Why it got there in the first place is, sort of, a mystery...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I've gotten a lot of debt collection calls, at work and at home. Thing is, they've never been for me. I have never defaulted on any debt in my life. Yet these people would call and call trying to get a hold of someone else. Telling them "That's not me, you have the wrong number," didn't work.
So what is the solution?
Pay your bills, no one calls.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
I somehow got on a "list" because a long time ago I had lived at the same address of someone, who later had massive debt issues. I began getting daily calls asking me to give contact info for the person, asking me to hand phone over to person, etc. Over and over again, I told the caller that I did not know the person and could not provide info and that I was not that person. Yet, they kept calling. I had to go through and delist my contact info from everywhere I could. Then I changed my phone number to something I never give out. Finally, I was free of these idiots.
It is bad enough that politicians already have an exemption to the do not call list (and to robo-calls). How much more abuse will we all get when debt collectors can indiscriminately spam us in hopes of "catching" the person they are looking for?
I think Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey have already got the memo, seeing as they were the ones that originally sent it.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
First, the FCC does not have any authority to "authorize" any such thing via their rules. Separation of powers, and the law is the law is the law. FCC rules are not withstanding.
Second, it's because of crap like this that I have taken the stance to Deny and/or block Every single call unless it's from somebody on my white list.
Evidently you never had someone make a purchase in your name without you knowing and then ignoring you when you tell them you didn't make it or in my case.....
Someone purchase something online and just happen to give them a random phone number that ends up being yours so you end up telling them 50 times that the person they are looking for doesn't live there, you never met them before, you don't know them and you didn't purchase anything.
Then they just randomly call looking for people that aren't you.
And don't accept your word that you aren't them, don't know them, and have no responsibilities for their bad debts.
And keep calling back.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
For Instance:
- Be in the Military
- Get injured on the job, maybe fall and break four ribs in your back, just supposing here
- Go to a civilian hospital that has agreed to accept the military payment as payment in full, any hospital that accepts Medicare has to
- Go about your life getting stationed overseas
- Return to the States after 5 years and try to buy and house and discover the that Hospital fucked up and marked the bill as unpaid, turned it over to a bill collector and not only can you not get approved to buy the house the damn bill collector starts harassing you and your wife with phone calls day and night.
- Hospital finally admits bill was in error but sorry they sold it to the bill collector so not their problem and the damn bill collector ain't gonna stop calling
Now tell me how paying my bills kept the calls away???
Bullshit. I always pay my bills and get calls every once in a while because some debt collectors are incompetent buffoons.
Wrong. Both I and my wife have been inundated by debt collection robocalls over the years when we got new phone numbers and no matter what we did, none of the callers would believe us when we told them they had a wrong number. Collectors doing skip tracing also will call all the people in a large radius with the same last name, looking for people related to a debtor.
If only that was what actually happens. I keep getting robo calls from debt collectors for a student loan that predates my birth. Even after explaining that they have the wrong person they still call for about 2 months and then sell it to someone else who keeps calling.
Time to offend someone
The problem when unemployed is that you need to monitor your phone for job-related calls, so you have to keep the ringer on.
Also, my particular cell phone makes it really difficult to blacklist numbers.
I seem to recall that the rules state that if you send them a note by snail mail, they are required to stop contacting you by phone.
Recently I was late on paying a Chase card, and I literally got called every single day about the matter. Eventually I called up and said, hey, I'm unemployed, I'm waiting on a check to arrive, and the rep explained that they will be robodialing my phone every single day until it is paid.
For a while I was giving out my skype number instead of my cell so they wouldn't keep harassing me, until I realized that I had enrolled in two step authentication using my phone as the second step. That meant they would always have my cell phone number. Which really sucks.
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Houston
WRONG!
I pay all my bills well in advance. Yet I get harassed for debts other people have, and I don't even know them.
It's because of this, I block ALL calls except those I know.
Oddly enough, this is not true. I've had my cell phone number for nearly 7 years, and I *still* regularly get calls (robo and otherwise) for somebody who had the number before me.
What I don't understand about all this bad debt is that most of it seems self-inflicted by the lender.
If they don't do adequate credit checks and issue credit to people who can't repay the loans, aren't they kind of likely to end up with bad debt?
I'm sure their argument is "But we wouldn't sell as many widgets if we didn't offer easy credit". Which is logic I don't undertstand -- how do you make money on widgets if you give them away and don't get repaid?
It almost seems like there's some kind of accounting magic about bad debt that pays for itself, like the tax writeoffs plus the sale of bad debt to collections somehow is enough to make up for it.
If they were more selective, you'd think it'd mostly be a problem that solves itself (but medical will always be a problem until we get universal care).
It's Federally guaranteed loans, I know I'd like the Government to get back the tax dollars that someone is trying to steal. And if that means allowing a debt collector to contact you via phone - so be it. If you're welching on a debt backed by the Federal Government, then you're not "stealing from the man", you're stealing from all your fellow taxpayers.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The 1% and corps never pay what they owe. They string it out and eventually settle on a much lower amount. Why should the rest of us?
If you're in the hole and have had debt collectors on your tail, they'll do the same thing. Wait long enough and they settle for far less for what you originally owed. Paying what you owe is a sucker's game.
Screw off. I've always paid my bills. In fact, I have no debt at all. My Brother-In-Law on the other hand...
He ran up some Medical Bills, and skipped out. Right out of the Country. The Collection Agency bought the Debt from the financially-strapped Community Hospital, and went Hunting.
They knew he wouldn't pay up, so they went after me. Not because I co-signed or anything, but because he used _my_ mailing Address, without my permission.
The Harassment went on for six months; each time the amount wanted went down a bit. I guess they felt that I would finally cave in to get rid of them.
It got pretty bad at Work. "Paging Supervisor Pangloss, there is a Call on line three for you from National Collections and Threat."
Significantly, because they knew enough about the Law to skate, they did _not_ go after my Credit Rating.
Collection Agencies, Robocallers, and the Legislators who drafted this obscenity are all just awful people.
By the way, about those Legislators... just who were they, and what are their home Phone Numbers? And what are the home Phone Numbers of all of their Relatives?
Many businesses and organizations use Robocalls as a way to ditch customer service, responsibility for their messaging, and a blanket excuse for inaccuracy and harassing uninvolved third parties.
I had an entire year where a law firm kept Robocalling me, apparently they thought I was a client. I was not, never had been, and there was no connection whatsoever between me and them. Nor had my phone number changed in 20 years. Someone either deliberately gave them a bad phone number or it was an accident.
So I do the responsible thing and call them to inform them of their error. They never answered their phone, ever (this was after normal business hours admittedly). Each time I called I got a different voice mail system but that's not my concern. I left multiple messages, which they never acknowledged in any way.
Eventually I had to systematically screen my calls and I refused to acknowledge them. If they can't be bothered to deal with me professionally, what do I owe them? Nothing! Yet this didn't address the fact that their error led to a year of unwanted Robocalls.
With the number of people that no longer have landlines is it any surprise that the government wants to be able to robocall cell phones? It starts with their debts because those are the ones they care about the most but once it is in place I assure you corporations will make sure they get added to. It's going to happen eventually no matter what because it will be the only way they can call you.
You can and should sue them. Make sure to get their contact info and document the calls. If it's legal in your state and their state, record the calls.
I'm worried as well. Somebody with the exact same name in Florida is buying a vehicle and medical practitioner insurance, and proceeded to give away my GMail address (but missing a period) for all sorts of crap, including spam.
Oddly enough, despite my insistence that they (dealership and insurance company) remove my email address, nobody responded back. In fact, the dealership proceeded to send me the doctor's vehicle details, including the VIN & model, and the next service appointment.
I know a lot of debt collection agencies are predatory, but that isn't every agency. I also know that often times, the debts are legitimate and should be treated as such. Either way, I was thinking big picture. Robocalls for debt collection means less human time spent on the process. That means the agency pays less per call than they would with human staff. That means it matters even less to them when they get the wrong contact info, which then compounds the issue for the people getting the robocalls.
Good luck trying to find out who they are when they wont tell you. The phone company is no help, they claim there is nothing they can do and suggest that you change your phone number.
For as long as I've had this cell phone number, there have been debt collectors who keep chasing an old, bad debt no matter how many times I tell them that the guy they're after is not and never will be at my number.
Pay your bills, no one-
{Lex Luthor}
WRONNNNNNNNNNG!
{/Lex Luthor}
n/t.
Have gnu, will travel.
Except when you did not actually buy anything and the calls are a harassment to hope you will pay just to make it go away.
Talk to anyone that has been a victim of identity theft.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Here's a link to a tool from Consumer's Union that makes it very easy to contact your representative and senators about this.
http://cu.convio.net/site/R?i=xvmqw9vbBqJiByrh8dXPBw
" that's the cost of not paying on time."
Not even once has a debt collector who has called my phone even been trying to reach me, let alone for a debt that I had actually incurred.
Good luck getting any money from people without telling who you are :)
That goes both ways, if they won't tell you who they are, they can't extract money from anybody either as no one would know who to pay.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Replying to myself:
The White House submitted a Budget Bill with a section regarding Student Loans, and only Student Loans; they've done it before. Parts of the provisions can be argued, but there is no point- Somebody in the _Legislature_ broadened that Section to cover __all__ Debt owned or backed the United States:
"...‘‘, unless such call is made solely to collect a debt owed to or guaranteed by the United States’’ after ‘‘charged for the call’’..." (TITLE III- COMMERCE, commencing on line 21)
(We need a good definition of what these Loans could also be; FHA, VA, SBA, and the Farm Credit System comes to mind.)
Analysis of the original White House provisions were actually a little insightful- (low) Estimates were that 41% of recent Student Loans are owed by Students who don't have a fixed Landline, and move often, and are difficult to contact. But all that is moot.
I still haven't found out the Asshole that changed the language...
Tar+Feathers= A good time had by...most.
In America. Reagan and Clinton cut most of it. There's unemployment, but businesses got wise to that and hire everybody as contractors.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I take it you have never been to a hospital?
The local hospital in my area has stopped sending bills, and now just sends all the bills to a debt collector. You then get inundated with calls to pay a bill that you can't even verify, which possibly could be fraud. Do you pay?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Pay my bills, no problems. Some one starts using my good name and soc; problems. What should I have done differently?
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Troll much?
Complete and utter bull. Even if you are perfectly punctual it is simply random whether you have been or will be shafted by some other person.
In my case it was some Kyesha chick in Mississippi who stuck my google voice number in the hat of bill collectors a few years after I had it.
Took years before those calls dried up. Explaining it is a bad/unrelated number is irrelevant. Blocking is irrelevant. Welcome to the world of only answering known numbers and all else to voice mail.
--- Mercutio was right.
Pay your bills, no one calls.
Horse-Fucking-Shit!!!!
I had a debt collector calling my house and hanging up for six months before they made robocalling illegal and I didn't even know who was calling or why. After I finally got my first call by a real human it was obvious they were looking for someone I did not know with the same last name as me. It took another three months to get them to stop calling despite them obviously calling numbers at random. I had to escalate to a supervisor and threaten filing a lawsuit and reporting them to the State Attorney General's office to finally get them to stop.
Up until recently I had them calling my home, my cell, and my son's Tracfone looking for my ex-wife who I divorced nearly nine years ago.
They called all hours, day and night. Those people are the lowest form of scum.
If you truly understood how debt collection really works, you might not be so passé about it.
I know that they break the law with extortion threats when trying to collect debt.
Pay your bills, no one calls.
Nonsense. I used to get several debt collection robo-calls every week, for someone I never heard of. Apparently, this deadbeat either used to have my phone number, or just listed my phone number on his credit app. Since it is a robo-call, there is no human at the other end to tell I am not the person they are looking for. I was only able to stop the calls by buying a $39 call blocker from Amazon.
Once I invent a device that allows you to kill people via the phone.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
We are a phone company, as in we have a 5ESS that serves our 3 prefixes. As such, I don't control the phone system and get to choose what we do.
This is not uncommon for people who work for companies: Most don't have you get your own phone service, you use what is provided.
If only. It's also the consequence of happening to have the same last name as an unrelated debtor, or having a phone number one or two digits off from a debtor, or attempting to do business with a merchant that doesn't understand that they have to actually provide a product or service to you if they want you to give them money, or a hospital that doesn't understand that they have to send you a bill if they hope to be paid, etc.
Funny, you might be able to track them down by that VIN, if I'm understanding you correctly. Then you could go and, uuum, talk nicely to them about using your email address.
Keep in mind that there are a lot of plain ol debt collection scams out there. I had a guy with an obvious Eastern Indian accent named , ahem, "John Smith" (almost laughed over the phone) tell me he was from the IRS and that I owed them money. I simply told him that what he was doing was wrong, and said in a slightly creepy voice that Kali was going to eat his children ... they hung up and never called back.
"This may come up for a vote in 24 hours or less."
Ironically, there are two groups of people that come to mind who regularly force these kinds of demands on innocent citizens.
Lawmakers and Terrorists.
It's rather strange people don't mind being threatened by the very person they elected to represent them.
Offer to pay but before you can pay you need to know who and where they are. If they give you a PO box you still have a name of the company.
gmail ignores periods, so it was more than just missing that.
How do you buy something online without paying for it right then?
Just as NSA snooping has a technical solution, encryptiion; do have debt collectors calls: call blockers with social options. I didn't know the problem was so big in the US, but when I searched for call blockers in Google Play I found some with community-maintained databases of numbers used by sales people, debt collectors and other phone scum.
I keep getting robo calls from debt collectors for a student loan that predates my birth.
Pre-birth education is cool. Your fetus must have been hell of smart.
Not true. If your crass ass sister ends up in collection, you will get call after call. If your ex defaults on her loan, they will remorselessly hound you over the phone. You don't have to have any debts to be harassed by a debt collector.
once more into the breach
There was this time I was 10 months into a 12-month phone contract, and it wasn't the cheap voice and text-only contract. I also had a mobile internet contract. I got fired. They wouldn't let me switch to a lower-tier plan for two months because I had a Blackberry, which I had purchased myself. Then the Blackberry got stolen.
I needed a phone so I bought a Trakphone and ported my number. And I had no money to pay their bill anyway, so I did not pay it.
Sprint had an unimpeachable legal case that I owes them some ridiculous a mount of money for cancelling both contracts early ($600, IIRC), and they sold my debt to debt collectors.
It does not matter if I win $300 million in the next lottery, I am never paying those bastards a fucking dime.
With many smartphones you can create a blacklist or whitelist. Just tell the phone not to allow anyone who isn't a contact to ring the number.
My phone ignores all calls from numbers not in my contact list so dial away assholes, it's your time that you're wasting, not mine.
I don't understand some of the people that keep complaining about marketing and debt collector calls and robocalls. It just means you don't know the law and don't know how to answer them. With marketing calls, I've always answered the calls and ask them to put me on the do not call list.
Back before robocalls, I took the 2 minutes to get a live person and pretended to not hear them clearly. I ask who the are, then sound confused and ask what company they're calling from. As soon as I have that I tell them I have their information and took notes and ask them to put me on their Do Not Call list. They never call back. The National Do Not Call list is a scam for politicians to get your number and call you. I've never been on that and maybe twice a year I get a new marketing call.
When robocalls started, I tried to listen to the full message for the Do Not Call information at the end. I listen to the message and found that they mostly used 2, at first, then 9, to automatically be put on the do not call list. As soon as I hear the robocall in English, I press 9 and the call hangs up. Even quicker than talking to a real person.
I also had debt collectors call before for different people. I listen and ask them whom they're looking for and tell them to update their information and stop calling. I think they cycle through a half dozen debt collectors before they get fully updated. One year, someone gave out my number as their number, or someone mis-entered a digit and I started getting calls for a little bit, but I put a stop to it immediately. Before robocalls, there may have been a dozen companies that called, but when robocalls started less than a handful of calls was enough to put an end to all unsolicited marketing. I did have to listen to the first few robocalls all the way through to figure out the number to press.
If everyone does what I do, then they will start tracking when you asked to be put on the list and start calling again after a year. The majority of people are too lazy to do the initial work to get peace of mind later, so until I change my number, I won't be hassled by marketing and robocalls. Once you get on someones Do Not Call list, they rarely remove you. It's just extra work for them to track, when they have 10's of millions of people that don't know the law.
Anyone that wants a new law to block them doesn't know the law. The laws exist already to block all these unwanted calls. Make the law work for you. I rarely get any unsolicited robocalls now. On the rare occasion that I do, I follow procedure.. I even moved a few times and got a new number that initially got these calls, but I put a stop to them within a month on any new number I have.