Debt Collector Abuses

Posted On: 2006-02-06Length: 15:53

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Hey everybody, and welcome back to your Debt Podcast. Today is Monday, February 6, 2006. My name is Jay Fleischman, and thank you so much for stopping by and listening to the show. If you are not currently subscribed, why don't you go over to the website at debtpodcast.com, enter your email address on the show notes on the right side of the, sorry, the right side of the show notes page, and you'll get an automatic email update every time there is a new show posted. Also, if you've got any feedback, you can call 206-202-5231 and of course on the show notes webpage you can also put in your feedback that will come directly to us at the Debt Podcast, and if you've got questions, that's what we're here for. We're here to give you answers.

So today we're going to talk a little bit about a telephone call that I got from a very old friend of mine, about a week ago. Let's call him, I don't know, let's call him Harvey. I've known Harvey a long time and he's a real upstanding guy, and he called me up and he told me that he'd been contacted by a collection agency about a phone bill that he had paid off before he moved from house to another a couple of months ago. Now Harvey's a great record keeper, and I've known him for a long time. He had a copy of the bill, a copy of the cancelled check, and a letter from the phone company showing there was no balance due. And he kept all of it. Still, the collection agency called him and they demanded payment in full. And when he told the debt collector that he paid the bill already, he was told that he still needed to pay it and that they had no record of it.

Well, Harvey even offered to send out copies of the cancelled check and the zero balance bill, but he was told that it wouldn't do him any good. And the debt collector did tell him that if he didn't get paid, he was going to get called back again. So Harvey hangs up the phone, he digs through his records, and he calls the old phone company. When he's on the phone with the customer service representative, he's told that the bill has indeed been paid in full, and that the collection agency referral was merely a mistake. Well, we all know what happens. A few days later the debt collection agency calls again. This time demanding a payment in no uncertain terms. Harvey tells the...