If you’re so hot to hit a mark in your never-ending game of Gotcha, why don’t you report all of my thread comments to Admin and get a ruling? I’m pretty sure I’ve been asking you, in your varying guises, to do that for over two years. When you see a “suspect” or a “busted” stamp below my alias, then we can talk about what so “assuredly” my career path is.
} Auto-dialed calls are illegal if they call your cell phone without your permission ... $500 for each call
You are referring to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), which was not written to address debt collection agency (DCA) calls. Case law in the minority has applied TCPA successfully to DCAs, usually involving skip trace calls and hitting a privacy claim square on. Most people getting DCA calls will not have TCPA claims that float.
It’s more often possible to work up a FDCPA claim for racking up mobile phone charges, since the DCA’s cost of delivering communication is not supposed to be shunted to alleged debtors.
} if you answer and they do not immediately identify themselves, it is an illegal robo caller
But when skip-tracing, a DCA is *not required* to divulge a business name until requested to. Again, we cannot treat DCA calls the same way we might treat sales calls.
See FDCPA § 1692b(1) Acquisition of location information
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/1692b
The vital phrase we must learn to use when discussing legal measures and consequences is “It Depends”. You can’t just run with a blurb on a wiki site or promotional language from a paper mill lawyer and think your strategy is bulletproof.
} keep calling even after I tell them they have a wrong number
A typical frustrating cycle. Mistrust of any ''wrong number'' claim is standard procedure at all the rogue collection agencies. You will never get satisfaction from a verbal request, and number blocking turns into an arms race you will lose. Send a ''cease communication'' notice via USPS Certified with return card. This is the method promoted by the FTC and many consumer watchdogs, and the only way to set a legal landmine, as such a notice is ignored at their risk of a lawsuit from you.
further discussion found here:
http://800notes.com/forum/ta-34af6a034ba34b6/unending-collection-calls
ACA International is a lobby group for the collection industry, one which insists that the runaway lawbreaking we can all see from its own members and non-member peers is negligible. Quietly they share the party line that all complaints come from whiny debtors who want an excuse to steal from banks. Complaining to ACAI is like consulting with the local wolf pack about the mysterious disappearance of chickens from your coop.
Taking your beef to the collector's doorstep is the right move. But what is "obvious" to you may not be the truth. It's not necessary or common practice for a collector to sell your phone number to other agencies. That and other data are tagging along with the account portfolios which debt buyers *do* obtain and resell. You can't do much about that because it's not your property and any notes which a given collector may add won't travel when your account is passed along. So you might have to endure a certain rinse-and-repeat cycle as the same debt is chased by multiple agencies.
I've had two or three agencies in a row hound me for the same total strangers, often someone who held my phone number two decades ago. They all got slapped with a prompt cease-comm notice, and so far it's been quiet the past year .... mainly because at least one of the targets got sued. I respond on paper every time; I would bet the hunted parties don't bother responding at all, until it's too late.