Repeated phone calls, relentless encroachment on your private and professional life and unending ways to compel you for your payment- you are facing all of these and feeling that you are in the debtor’s prison! Every ring on your telephone and each knock on your door have started to give a shudder-what if it’s a debt collector? Creditor harassment is indeed a major issue these days. Indeed, nothing can be more exasperating and humiliating than constant harassment in the hands of debt collectors. But the law is by your side. The federal government has enacted the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act to protect your consumer rights and safeguard your interests against deceptive and harassing debt collection practices. Here are some points to enlighten you about how the FDCPA can help you deal with debt collection harassments.
Who is a Debt Collector?
The first thing that crops up in your mind, while discussing FDCPA, is obviously “who is a debt collector”.
Well, the FDCPA defines a debt collector as someone who regularly collects debts owed to others. Any of the following can be a debt collector:
- Collection Agencies
- Companies/organizations that purchase unsecured debts from creditors and then try to collect the payments on these debts.
- Lawyers collecting debts regularly.
Some Important Provisions of the FDCPA
The following are some of the restrictions that the FDCPA imposes on debt collection practices:
- The debt collectors must not contact the debtors before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m.
- If a debtor requests the debt collector to stop all communication with him, then the debt collector must comply with the request.
- The debt collectors must not use any harassing means (including threats for arrest) to contact the debtor or to obtain payments.
- The debt collectors must not misbehave at the debtor’s workplace.
- The debts must not be discussed with anybody other than the debtor, his spouse or the attorney.
- Debt collectors cannot misrepresent any debt and must not wrongly publish a debtor’s name on a bad debt list.
- No unjustified amount must be demanded from debtor.
FDCPA is by Your Side
You may have defaulted on your payments, but that definitely does not give the debt collectors the right to harass you. Under the FDCPA, you have all the right to sue the debt collector, if they violate the FDCPA provisions and violate consumer rights. You can singly file a lawsuit in your state court within a year of violation or you can take legal action as class action lawsuit. You can consult a debt collection attorney dealing with the FDCPA violations, while you file your lawsuit.
Countless people across the US are victims of unlawful collection practices. If you are one of them then just brooding over your plight is no way out. The solution is as easy as making yourself accustomed to the FDCPA provisions and lodging a consumer complaint with the Federal Trade Commission or with the office of your state Attorney General. The law is by your side; so the best thing to do is to take its help and get yourself out of all those annoying debt collection procedures.
