Harassing a non debtor

yes, we need to think from this point of view

You have a valid complaint. There are three SallieMae companies at the Las Vegas facility that is/was calling you. Automatic dialer for all three.

You complain directly to the FTC

www.ftc.gov

and to your US Congressman/US Senator

I'm now getting the infamous strange phone calls myself. I called the 888 number that another person had in here, but they couldn't find me account by my social. Then it asked to put my phone number in and I hung up from there. I'm not putting my number in there.
Needless to say I think it has something to do with my student loan. I am current on it, but was behind a couple months. They told me they had to notify the credit bureau and that I may get some calls for a little bit. I am assuming that is why this number is now calling me. They didn't leave a message and when I try to call it back it is always busy.
Hope I helped someone.

For those having problems with Sallie Mae - they are publicly traded stock (symbol: slm) and Yahoo Finance has a list of their corporate officers, headquarters, fax numbers, etc.

SLM Corp.
12061 Bluemont Way
Reston, VA 20190
Phone: 703-810-3000
Fax: 703-810-5074

finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=SLM

[color=red][size=2][Please copy and paste the address in your browser-Mike][/size][/color]

These people sends their machine to call me every other night. And when I do respond i get a message machine. I recorded their daily harrassments, I've also written them to stop and they have not. I have copies of them receiving the letters. how do i go about suieng them and is anyone else interested to sue them with me?

Im taking this very seriously

Quote:

I have a Household Visa account which has a past due balance of about 300 dollars. Household is a 'subsidiary' of HSBC Card Services. HSBC I understand is one of the world's largest financial type companies with assets totalling over 300 billion dollars. They have 9,500 offices in over 72 countries. Anyway, they call me all the time. They never leave a voicemail. When I answer, the automated voice says 'Please hold, we have an important message for you..' - I can't believe that my phone rings and I am immediately placed on hold by a company with over 300 billion in assets. This in itself is reprehensible. So I hold. An agent comes on the line and immediately identifies themself with their first name and asks for my account. I reply 'What account number?' I ask to speak to a supervisor and I am always told that I cannot. I ask for a name and ID# and I am given a name and ID#. I ask for their location and I am told 'Oregon' or 'California'. When I finally did get ahold of someone, supposedly a supervisor, I told them that when I ask for the name, location and ID# of any of their representatives that I am told they cannot give that info out. The supervisor confirms that and says company policy forbids them from giving out their names, location and ID#. I then tell her that if that is the case, there is a woman named Catherine A., ID# XXX in Oregon who is not aware of your policy because she gave me that info. The only response to any other questions I get is 'What is your phone #' 'What is your account number' 'What is your name'. I tell them I am afraid to give out any personal information over the phone and they say they can't help me and hang up. When I call them back, the automated voice says it has identified me by caller ID and says 'If your account # ends in the last four digits XXXX, press one'. This is a severe lapse in security as since CC #'s are only 16 digits, I can call from someone's phone and get 25% of their CC#. If I know someone's name and phone #, call from their phone (I can spoof caller ID easily), I can do a lot of damage. I explained this to a rep. of theirs and they did not seem to care as I was told 'I have no control over the system.'. I have asked more than 3 times to be taken off their list of phone #s to call with their automated system. I have asked to be able to speak to someone on a line that is not being recorded. They say their calls may or may not be recorded for customer service reasons. I say if you may or may not be recording this call for customer service reasons, then please tell me what happens to the recordings if by chance one of my calls is recorded because I do not want to have my voice recorded to an unknown medium with my phone #, name, address, SS# and CC# in the recording unless I know what type of recording is being made and what happens to that recording. I am told that is not possible. I ask for a copy of any recordings that are made of my calls and informed that that is not possible. I ask then, how is recording my calls serving me, the customer if you cannot provide me any information regarding the recording of my calls? They usually hang up by this time. My frustration with this company has reached its limit and I am curious, since I have documented all my calls and theirs and I think that they are behaving illegally in some ways, what should I do and how should I go about doing it?

Thanks!

HSBS Card Svcs,

It seems from what you have stated that they use a specific system to contact the customers. The system is programmed in such a manner that it can identify CC# from the caller's phone #. It's risky. You can contact them personally regarding this matter.

You can file complaint with your state's Attorney General's Office, FTC, and BBB. These are no doubt good places to start. Also visit econsumer.gov to report your complaint, since econsumer deals with international companies.

Always remember you're fighting with an internationally renowned organization and their system, the process might be longer. So don't lose your heart and be prepared for anything.

Bryan

Still another victim of endless calling from this number!

how long should i wait before I file a law suit?I'm so sick of their endless calls.Each day all day morning till night. How do i start filing a lawsuit on sallie mae?If you can recommend any lawyer thats not too costly i appreciate it.

i know their process may be longer but how long do you suggest I should wait?

Quote:

It's not just the numerous calls they make, but they are a ripe off as well. Sallie Mae triples the amount of the student loans with illegal interest rates and calculation methods. I feel they should be investigated all around. How do I go about getting that started?

You can file your complaints at the consumer protection office in your state as well as the FTC and the BBB. The bureaus will conduct a necessary investigation and active steps will be taken to protect the consumers.

I drive 90k lb semi and kept getting this annoying calls 6,7 times aday,thinking its my boss and a few times on the road this telephone calls has almost cost me a close call of getting into an accident on the highway and plus road. What can i do about? I start at 400 am to work and the blitz of the same numbers and when you call back its a fax or they hang up. I fear with this i will get into an accident and hurt or kill innocent people because of this.

MAD TRUCKER

702-804-8484 is the number of Sallie Mae. Have you sent a cease and desist letter to them for ending all phone calls? They are required to follow the federal laws otherwise you can file legal charges against them.

Do let me know if you need a format of the cease and desist letter. I will provide you with one.

Regards
Roxette

the EXACT same # has been calling me for about 5 months now, on my cell phone as well. I decided to look the number up online to see if i could find out any information about them. I have never answered when they called, becuase I don't know anybody with that area code. I just hit ignore, and they never leave a message... I think I'm gonna look around a little bit more, and let you know if I find anything.

I do not have any debts let alone outstanding debts. I went to Las Vegas in early Nov 05 and by the time I got home, the phone calls had started. I've notified the BBB in NV today. I didn't give my phone number out to anyone in NV, it is unpublished and on the NDNC list. I don't have my phone through a typical phone company either. So how did these picker heads get my number.

Unhappy and Fed Up

I am sorry to hear the situation you are going through. At this point, you should definitely use all the legal powers mentioned in the fdcpa laws. Send a cease and desist letter to the company. Once they receive your letter, they are required to stop calling you any further. If they do so, they will be violating the federal laws and you can take actions against them with the help of your attorney. Also, put your complaints at the FTC, BBB so that these unfair activities are reported and necessary actions can be taken against them.

Always send your letter through certified mail with return receipt requested. You will have all the proof of your actions taken and will be able to defend yourself whenever required.

I have reported them to both the BBB and the FTC. Both ask me for all my personal information. Like I really want to give it to them, so they can post it all over the place. I think they only have my phone number and if I send them anything they will have all my information. Then what?

The FTC and BBB will use your personal information only to locate you. Your contact information will be safe with them. FTC and BBB will take necessary steps to stops the calls coming at your end.

Household Credit Services and HSBC are the same company. I used to have to write my CC check out to HOusehold Credit Services, but now it is HSBC.

you're not the only one.. and if you call back. its busy.. is this harrassment?

The basic federal laws as per the fdcpa restrict the collection agencies from calling people before 8 am or after 9 pm.

Besides, there are many other laws stated in the FDCPA that ensure proper collection activities.

You have a legal protection under the federal laws. Congress enacted the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act to protect consumers who are being harassed by collection agents.

File complaints to everyone and anyone who will listen. There should laws against these scam artists.

after reading your stories I thought... I wonder how many times they call me a day... they called me 6 times yesterday! Their first call was just after 8am then 10:45 then 1:50 then 6:35, 6:47, and 7:40. I have had some call as early as 7 or 8 am and as late as 9 or 10!

I've gotten calls like CRAZY from this number and have been trying to figure it out. Is it confirmed that it is Sallie Mae? I don't want them to call me anymore, how do I get rid of them?

Dorothy, send them Cease Comm letter. collection agencies should honor your request of not to call you any more. Get a sample letter from the Free Sample Letter e-book-

http://www.debtconsolidationcare.com/books/

I just had my cell phone number changed today after 3 months of this number harrassing me. It wouldn't allow me to answer it and it would be busy when I called it back. It called me all day and all night long!!! I got sick of it!!

Curious - do they offshore their call centers?

In the past 3 years I`ve had several different phone numbers, cell and landline. Every single one of them was formally owned by a "bad debtor". I spent many hours getting these creditors to realize that I was a "new owner" of the number and to stop calling me. I tried asking the home, and cell companies to issue me virgin numbers. Their reply was "we wait 6 months before reissuing a number". If that`s the case, creditors should also have a 6 month window in which to stop calling the number. You would think 6 months of getting a "this number has been disconnected recording" would give them a clue. How many people do you know have their phone shut off for 6 months, pay the bill, and have it turned back on?

RSR, the collectors are aware that you are not the person they are trying to get ahold of. They are hoping that youll just pay the bill so they stop harrassing you.

Keep a record of all the calls that cost you money on your cell phone when they call and file a complaint.

I just wanted to point out. Sallie Mae has been diversifying their collection activity. I know for a fact that the state of Indiana gave them a contract to collect state income taxes as a part of an amnesty program. I believe there is a contract with the federal government to collect Federal income taxes as well. Typically, the Western Collection Center of Sallie Mae provide lender due diligence and other collection activity for FFELP loans and private education loans. Hope this helps.

I had a ca continuously call me and it left 5 messages a day. when i called they said it was a dialer system and they could not do anything about it.
isnt that crazy?

i recieved a check from wilshire and it is suppose to be part of a contest i entered.??

You end that with ??? if you never entered into any contest and you don't know this company, this is a scam, throw that phony check away.

Excuse me for asking, but who exactly is Wilshire?

Is Sallie Mae governed by the fdcpa? I have been receiving a number of calls from them at various times throughout the day due to my past due loans. Today was the most interesting. They called me at 8:10am and had me on the phone for 10 minutes (they were less than nice and said the would note the account as I'm refusing to pay but I told them that's not the case I just have no money to pay). Then at 9:30am they called me again and had me on hold. After explaining to them that I just spoke with them the woman told me that I should be calling them. At which point I told her that I do call once a month and report the fact that I'm still desitute. I thought they could only make contact once a day?

Hi Anita--

No, Sallie Mae is not subject to the fdcpa. They are a first party collector, and that law only applies to third party collectors. Additionally, student loans fall under a different category, if I remember right, than regular debt collection.

Sallie Mae is horrible....I have been fighting with them for the last five months. In a nutshell, I decided to further my education online. So I got the loans thru Sallie Mae and off to school I went. But the school had technical problems and no matter what I did, they would not ever call me back, wouldnt check into the problems. This resulted in me being dropped from my classes because they said I violated the attendance policy, when in fact I was not able to access anything--the system had locked my account without reason or explanation. Prior to this I was carrying a near-perfect GPA in all classes. I had to get the indianapolis BBB involved because the school claimed that I didnt do anything, and that I didnt even report the problem to the school!! So, I demanded full refund of all tuition for that semester because of their screwup. They refused, saying that I didnt make any effort to tell them that there was a problem and that no one else seemed to have this problem. The VP of online operations actually wrote a letter to the BBB telling them that I am lying. So, when I found the emails I had traded back & forth with the school's tech support office, and forwarded them on to everyone of importance at the school, their tone mysteriously changed in a serious hurry. They paid the loan back to SLM in full.

This is where the real fun begins. Sallie Mae got their money back before the loan even reached repayment status. It was paid in full at the beginning of last August, but in October they added interest to the account. Repayment began in october and I of course didnt send them money because it was all supposed to be taken care of. To this day, from October to yesterday, I have spoken with dozaens of people at SLM. I have been cursed out, called a deadbeat, told to pay the friggin bill, hung up on, and all kinds of ridiculous crap. All for a bill that isnt even owed!!! So, I finally reach a supervisor....and he told me that there was a 10% fee placed on my account called a "prepayment penalty" because it was paid off too fast for SLM to benefit from the interest. SLM doesnt have that kind of fee--I checked. A second supervisor told me that it was an "origination fee", but the paperwork I have, as well as their own website's statements about my specific account, all say that there is no origination fee on my loan. Then, a THIRD supervisor told me that it was a "Disbursement fee". This is the same as an origination fee, and again, their website clearly says that my loan does not carry such a fee. A FOURTH supervisor told me a few weeks back that it was a "guarantor insurance fee", but once again, nothing about this fee is on my application & promissory note, and their website specifically says that my specific account does not carry this fee. I spoke with a FIFTH supervisor there yesterday...he told me that it was an application fee....so I directed him around his own company website to show him that:

1--the specific type of loan I had carries no such fee
2--my specific account actually says that the application fee is 0

Even then, he persisted. He tried to tell me that it must then be an origination fee, and I took him on a further tour of his website to show him otherwise again. FINALLY he agreed to put in a request to remove undocumented charges from my account. Along the way I demanded that an account research be done no less than three times, and they couldnt even do that for me, which they claimed they were doing but they never once sent me anything even remotely related to that. Once they sent me the payment history, which is nothing more than the same info I pull up on their website. These people are MORONS....be careful.

One more thing--I got a letter in the mail from them in the middle of January, telling me that if I did not pay up and make the loan current that they were going to place a negative entry on my credit reports. The letter says in big bold print:

If you do not bring the delinquent loan current before JANUARY 31, 2008, we will inform the national credit bureaus of the delinquency.

They gave me until 1/31/08 to resolve this....and then, they placed it on my credit reports as a negative account on JANUARY 16. Somehow I KNOW that cannot be legal....

This place calls themselves the "champions of higher education"....and it took me five months to get one person on the phone that could add and follow the most basic concept. The best thing you can do when dealing with these morons is to get as educated as possible about the laws that apply. They lied to me for months, right up until that last phone call yesterday...

I have been getting these phone calls for 4 years. They are all from different debtors. apparently there is a guy in town with the same first and last name. They don't believe that it isn't me, and the ALL continue to call. I have no idea what to do.

Send each of the a written request that they no longer contact you by phone. Send it certified mail, return receipt requested.

We started receiving calls yesterday from 866-558-6255. They called four times over the course of the day and no one was home and they didn't leave any messages. They started calling this morning at 8:07, 8:52, 9:42, 9:43, 10:57 and 11:14 a.m. Needless to say they woke us up with the first two calls. My husband finally answered the third one at 9:42 and they asked for a Logan Hughes. My husband informed them they had the wrong number and then they asked if he knew a Logan Hughes, which he told them no and said, "Don't call me any more". Then the guy called him right back at 9:43! My husband answered, "I just told you no one by that name lives here and we don't know anyone by that name. If you call me again, I'm reporting you to the FCC!!!" and hung up. So then we left to get breakfast and came back and they called again, which we didn't answer. So he was on the house phone and I Googled the number and came up with Sallie Mae, so I called them on my cell. They just answered, "Hello?". I explained what was going on and the woman asked if anyone in the house had an account with Sallie Mae. I told her that I had just signed up to get information about college for my daughter, but that was the extent of our contact with a Sallie Mae. She said she had two numbers in their system for this Logan Hughes and she would mark ours as a bad number and apologized. O.K. - it's over! Then they call back at 11:14!!! I answered and they asked for Logan Hughes. I said, "I just called this number back and spoke to someone and told them you have the wrong number. She said she was marking it as bad. Do you understand that you're violating the law?" And she said, "Oh wait, I see there's a "B" next to this number marking it as bad, but it takes up to 30 days until it's removed from the system. I'll make a notation again".

I was blown away! So your now telling me that you're going to continue to call us for the next 30 days?????? I'm sending them a cease and desist letter if I can find an address for them. Even if I did have a debt with them, calling 6 times in the span of 3 hours is a bit much.

I have a serious problem when a company tells me I'm going to have to wait ANY AMOUNT OF TIME for them to remove my number from their auto-dialer after I tell them they are calling an incorrect number. I've had that happen to me a few times and I have told the companies (usually third party collectors) that I am not waiting for them to remove me from their system. I didn't ask to be put into their system in the first place and if they can't correct the problem immediately, I will document how many calls I continue to get from them and then they will be sued.

Somehow magically, I stop getting calls.

Not saying this will work every time; however, it's worth a try.

One of the few times it didn't work the first time was with Bank of America calling for some woman I have never heard of. After the second time I told them I would be suing them, and listed of the date of the first time I told them they had the wrong number, who I told this to, and how many calls I got from them after that, they did stop calling. I now the FDCPA does not apply to the OC; however, I was just tired of them harassing me trying to reach someone I don't know.

I guess they realized I did mean business, though, after I showed them how well I had documented it.