Debt Collectors Using Facebook To Embarrass Those Who Owe 266
Not even the tranquility of FarmVille can save you from the long arm of debt collectors. Melanie Beacham says that a collector from MarkOne Financial contacted her relatives about her past due car note via Facebook. She is filing suit alleging that the company is harassing her family. Tampa based consumer attorney Billy Howard of Morgan & Morgan says, "Now Facebook does a debt collectors work for them. Now it's not only family members, it's all of your associates. It's a very powerful tool for debt collectors to use."
Re:Personally (Score:3, Interesting)
Indeed.. I totally agree that this needs to be fixed.
Your history of _not_ being in debt and annual income should be more important.
I actually use my credit card on a regular basis when making online purchases.. I just pay it off immediately. I don't put anything on it unless I have the money actually sitting in my bank account. This practically turns my credit card into a debit card.
You also get all those benifits they use to suck people in.. while not making them a dime (and infact, probably costing them money).. which is very satisfying.
Re:I'm Pretty Sure That's Illegal (Score:5, Interesting)
Working for a major financial institution (disclaimer: while I am not going to identify said FI, what I say in no way is a representation or an opinion of the FI itself, but only personal opinion of myself based on experience), I have seen a lot of fraud occur this way. The typical scam going around is that someone calls you, says they are collecting on a debt and that they will soon be initiating legal action against you and it can be easily avoided by paying a percentage and then that they will clear it off the books and erase it permanently from your credit report. Then they ask for your card# (and if they are really bold, they'll ask for the CVV2 code on the back of the card) along with the expiration, and then proceed to create a cloned card and rack up as many fraudulent charges as possible before the bank suspects fraud and shuts the card off. It's become so common that when I see certain transactions, I know what has happened before the person I'm talking to has even said that they had someone call them up in this manner. To be quite honest, debit and credit card fraud is at a very high level currently.
Re:Personally (Score:1, Interesting)
Or -- strange as this may sound -- renting one for life because you do not make enough to buy one. No one is entitled to anything.
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If you can afford to rent for life, you should be able to be making house payments instead of rent payments. Then you are investing and not throwing your money in a hole- then for those poor at saving, at least they have something to retire on.
There are plenty of "homeowners" here in the US who would beg to differ - roughly 20% of mortgages now have an outstanding balance that EXCEEDS the resale value of the house, and payments 2-3x higher than comparable rents. Essentially, these "owners" have been paying above-market rents for the last 3 or 4 years to the bank for the privilege of claiming to own a house...
Scummy debt collectors (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously.
I have owned my current house for 11 years. A few months ago I started getting calls on my landline for debts incurred by one of the previous owner's kids.
The kid hasn't lived here in over 10 years. The kid never had my telephone number.
The scummy debt collectors cross-referenced an old address to a phone number, completely ignored the directory information on the number, and started harassing me mercilessly.
It took many weeks to get them to understand that I was perfectly serious about taking them to court if they didn't lay off.
Not that I have any debt other than mortgage (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I'm Pretty Sure That's Illegal (Score:2, Interesting)
One thing that helped was using social engineering methods to get the operators name, explaining to him I needed a copy of the companies original invoice for tax purposes and a copy of the terms of the contract. When he was unable to give me information I immediately requested he put his supervisor on the phone. After repeated requests due to the supervisor being unavailable I informed him he was doing his managers job for them and he should either
a. stop doing his managers job for them
b. demand better wages or
c. stop calling me making unjustified requests for funds.
In paralel with this I contacted the ISP and requested they formally advise me who their debt collection company was as I was dealing with a suspected fraud case unable to justify their debt collection practice.
When I explained to the debt collected operator he was obviously smart enough to get a better paying job working for anything else his attitude improved. Eventually the company gave up contacting me.
Excising debt collection companies from the equation is (in my experience) the best way to solve the problem. These companies operate on a % of debt collected and pay minimal wages to operators with a resultant skill level.
Tho, I also know a % of debt collectors are chasing frauds who have no intention of paying anyone anything. Having said that, there are more effective ways to obtain a result - small claims court & repossessions.
FDCPA (Score:3, Interesting)
I work at a collection agency. This breaks all sorts of FDCPA laws, especially about releasing information to 3rd parties.
This agency will get audited very soon.
Debt Collector Fun Story (Score:3, Interesting)
Once when moving out of an apartment, I had the manager come in on the day I moved out after the apartment was empty. She and I went through the whole apartment and did the evaluation for how much of my deposit I would be getting back. The end result was that I was going to get back all of my deposit minus the small fee for cleaning/whitewashing/whatever that happens.
Fast forward two months -- I get a call from a debt collector wanting me to pay money to the apartment complex. Well, being as I was expecting a check back from them, and this was the great state of California, my response was this:
"I am due a refund of X dollars from the apartment complex. I have this in writing and signed by the apartment manager. Their refund is now past due, as California state law allows the apartment complex only 30 days for the ex-tenant to receive their money. As such, if I do not have a check in my hand by the end of the week, I am contacting the CA housing authority as well as the sheriff and going after both of you for failure to pay, harassment, and fraud."
She apologized profusely, and in 3 days I had a check in my hand with the full amount owed to me. Woo-hoo!