George, the call may not necessarily be pertaining to you. It may be that someone used you as a reference when they applied for credit and the company is contacting you in order to get to the originating person who took out the loan.
This number has been calling & calling. If they would leave a message with a little info about who they are calling for, then I would gladly call them, but until then, it's not going to happen. I know this does not have anything to do with me owing anybody a debt that was sent to collections, so I'm thinking it may be for a family member and to me it's pretty shi!!y for them to be hounding us for something that doesn't pertain to us!!!! If it's about this certain family member, I have know idea where this person is, haven't in about 5 years, but have received numerous calls from others looking for them.
My call from you showed up as being from Jermyn, PA. Not knowing anyone there or being familiar with the phone number, I didn't answer. Because we get scamming calls weekly, not just from companies like yours but those who are trying to steal identities, etc. Your company did not bother to leave a message making me even more suspicious of you. And we do not owe anyone or any business money and have no outstanding debts, but we get calls through the years from companies like yours who haven't really done their homework and just start calling anyone on the internet or whitepages.com that has a name that matches ours. Even though you and others like you are legitimate companies, you are still considered harassing phone calls to me. I used to have to collect debts too by phone, but we did our homework and there's even more opportunity for that with computers than there was when I was doing this type of work. We're fed up with getting collection calls that do not belong to us, or calls wanting to know if we know someone mentioned by name that shares a same name or last name as ours. If you'd done your homework, you'd know that you're dialing a wrong number.
I feel compelled to post one more time. Because of my common last name, I've received about a dozen debt collection calls over the last 6 years. Each time, it is clearly not me or my husband but each time I suffer the stress of a possible erroneous debt affecting me. If you think for a moment that these companies only want to collect from the debtor you are sorely mistaken. Here is the link to an article that appeared in the Los Angeles times about 18 months ago.
These companies often buy junk debt and don't really care who pays it as long as they get their money. The stress and anxiety they cause to those who receive erroneous calls is irrelevant to them. If they did their homework they would easily reduce or eliminate erroneous calls but they have no reason to. It's easier to have a computer dial everyone with the same last name, then sit back and wait for the "suckers" to call back. I find these tactics despicable. Send letters with all relevant information. If you have our phone numbers, you have our addresses. If you don't, you're really bad at your job. When those of us who receive numerous erroneous calls have the written information in front of us, we can easily choose to ignore it. We can't do that with phone calls that are furtive and frightening. Grow up. You want to buy junk debt and go after people, more power to you but you do not have the right to involve those of us who pay our bills and carry no debt in your slimy process.