A collection agency. Quite forceful and insistent on collecting a debt that wasn't even mine. Refused for quite some time to listen to anything I said. Just wanted money I didin't even owe.
Same old the story. These rogue "toll free" / "private name" / "CCS" / ad nauseam callers are telephone terrorists, stalkers, harrassers, criminals. Are some of them actually bill collectors or insurance agents? More likely they are Big Brother "psy-ops" trainees, would be my guess. Because who else would commit such unconscionable, unscrupulous and criminal acts en masse? Ordinary bill collectors are not such nice people either, but usually they are working on commission for companies that are actually owed money by the debtor they are calling, threatening, and harrassing at all hours of the day.
So why would any ordinary bill collectors or insurance agents chronically make malicious prank calls on such an apparently organized and well-finaced basis, tag-teaming, ping-ponging, from state to state?
They started calling us around February of this year, originating from Florida and Texas, allegedly, falsely, looking for some non-existent "nicholas thomas," and posing as bill collectors. After several weeks of multiple harrassing calls per day from various out-of-state numbers, we got on the internet and reported them on several different websites, including this one. Then we called our phone company and had the "distinctive ring" and other features added to our phone service as a discount-package deal.
The rogue calls in February stopped after about a month, possibly because we stopped answering "toll free" calls altogether. Hard to tell? But the calls started again several weeks ago, this time from different states, starting with Washington State. My best advice to anyone getting harrassed by these rogue calls is to turn all your telephone ringers off except for the main telephone phone that you most frequently use. And never under any circumstances answer a "toll free" / "private name" or any other phone call like that, which by default makes a distinctive ring on our phone, which is set to ring at it's lowest volume. If they call back more than once a day, turn off the ringer on your main phone and allow legitimate callers to leave messages on your voicemail, until the rogue calls stop coming in. Thus far, none of the rogue callers have left voicemail, I'm guessing because they know that that could be used as evidence against them in a lawsuit. Because you can save messages in voicemail that reside on your phone company's servers, proving who called, when they called, and what they said.
Our selective call blocking service only blocks up to 15 numbers at a time, and these rogue callers appear to have literally hundreds, or even thousands, of phone numbers for every area code in the US. So if you block one number they be sure to call you back from another number, and another, and another, until you've hit the 15 selective block limit.
We can only hope that the afterlife holds something very nasty for these rogue pranksters. Or maybe their bad karma will catch up with them sooner than that?
And by all means, if you have the time, please report the rogue callers on every website that allows such reporting. Some people advice reporting them through the FCC, State boards of collection agencies, writing letters to the rogue caller's company, and so forth. But that sounds like it could be more trouble than it's worth. Completely ignoring them makes much more sense to me, although I have been using our selective call blocking service to block area codes and prefixes of these rogue callers. I've had to block five of them in the last month. We'll see if they expand their attacks, or give it up.
I've been getting calls from this number and others in the 425 area code for someone named Gerald... No idea who that is. Some are machine generated and others, are made by a real person who lives in an alternate universe. I tell them they have the wrong number... nobody by that name here... they want me to take a message. Insane.
Under the TCPA, a consumer has a right to file a lawsuit and recover $500 for each call that violates the TCPA. The TCPA can also be used in conjunction with the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act in some situations.
Generally, the TCPA does not apply to debt collectors making collection calls to debtors. However, if you are subjected to calls from a debt collector and you are not the debtor, you may file a lawsuit against the debt collector under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) and the TCPA.
This right was recently recognized by Judge Legrome D. Davis in a case called Watson v. NCO Group, Inc. NCO Group is a debt collector that uses automated prerecorded collection calls. In this case, Mr. Watson alleged he was getting hundreds of calls from NCO Group after he got a new phone number. Mr. Watson claimed he owed no debt to NCO Group, Inc. Mr. Watson filed suit under both the FDCPA and TCPA.
David Israel, defense lawyer for NCO, argued that the TCPA should not apply to debt collectors. Judge Davis rejected the argument made by David Israel. The judge ruled that Mr. Watson had a right to sue NCO Group Inc under the TCPA for $500 for each call. Judge Davis wrote;
[The] Court is convinced that a non-debtor's rights are in fact violated when he is subjected to repeated annoying and abusive debt collection calls that he remains powerless to stop.
Judge Davis' ruling was based upon his interpretation that collection calls to non-debtors violate the privacy rights provided by the TCPA.
So what can you do if you receive "wrong number" calls from debt collectors?
1. Sign up for the Do-Not-Call registry.
2. Save the calls captured by your voice mail or answering machine.
3. Contact a consumer lawyer.