CA claim

Well... I don't have a personal experience in this regard. All collection agencies can claim that they are not scams. It becomes your responsibility to check out their BBB records in order to get information about them. You can even check the Ripoff Report in order to find out what people have to say about them.

Its pretty easy to tell the scammers from the legitimate companies. Legitimate collection agencies won't harass you, they won't lie and threaten and they will send you validating documentation.

They do exist, but sadly are few and far between.

Think about it...any reasonable company would understand and even expect someone to want to make sure the debt in question is valid. Even if they are 'stalling' as so many scam collectors put it, they can't stall once they got validation. It seems to only be those companies who have no such paperwork that scream 'stalling tactic".