Dealing with creditors and debt collection agencies is always a difficult ordeal. Their annoying and persistence way of tracking you down no matter where you are can be very frustrating for you, your family and even your fellow colleagues.
Fortunately, to protect the overly abused debtors, there is the Fair Debt Practices Act or the FDCPA for short. It is a federal law that bans unfair debt collection practices which will affect the quality of debtors life considerably.
While this article does not list the whole act, it is good to know the common illegal debt collection practices so that you will not be intimidated and know how to deal with them.
1. Contact third parties including your families, friends, neighbors or employers about your debt.
Unless the court has given them permission for your creditors to do so, it is illegal for them to contact third parties about your debt. But they may contact third parties for the purpose of locating you. Even so, creditors must not reveal why they are looking for you, unless you are a minor.
2. Contact you at odd hours of the day late night or too early in the morning.
Under normal circumstances, any time between 8am to 9pm is a acceptable time for them to call. Under no situation should your creditors call you when you are sleeping, for example at 3am.
3. Contacting you repeatedly by phone or not identifying themselves when they called.
4. Continue to contact you when you are represented by a lawyer or when they have received a written request from you to cease contacting you. ( a cease letter)
5. Make threats, use obscene, profane or abusively languages and comments on you.
6. Misleading you that they are affiliated with any state or federal government, or the legal status of your debts.
These are just some of the common illegal debt collection practices. The FDCPA bans just about any abusive, dishonest and unfair debt collection practices that might affect the quality of your life greatly.
To find out more about your rights as a debtor, visit www.ftc.gov/os/statutes/fdcpa/fdcpact.htm for more information. Its always good to know your rights as they give you a means of handling your creditors such that they dont take advantages of you. Nevertheless, understand that the purpose of the FDCPA is to help you deal with creditors and not to ignore them and your debts.
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