How do I strike back against illegal calls?

Surely someone has an answer to this.

steelblade- tell me a little more about what you want to accomplish on the civil side and I'll see if I can help you out.

I want to sue them in a punitive action for the stress and related lack of sleep, etc, they caused me by this illegal call. This is also why I want to keep the issues seperate, too often a company will get sued and manage to still turn a profit. Simply giving them the option of cancelling the debt protects only the company, but does little or nothing to prevent future occurances.

Example. A friend of mine missed some weekly truck payments (Never agree to weekly payments, no honest business requires such a thing.) and the repossessers literally ran him off the road in a pair of tow trucks, then brandished a firearm while taking the truck from him. 3 television lawyers called him PERSONALLY (Yes, the same ones that appear in their commercials) to offer services but he declined, so these illegal activities continue.

I don't want to see that happen if I can help it. These forums are full of people that have been abused illegally and the government that is supposed to protect us, isn't. Civil court may be the only option for me, but I will need to know how to find a lawyer, etc, or even if something like this can be done without lawyers.

I can't offer you much with legal advice except for some moral support. I too recently came across some debt issues and I now face the same harrasment you are encountering.

I also want to take legal action against these guys but it's important to keep your head on straight and out smart them. Those annoying collectors will slip up on their own if you let em.

You may want to try sending the collection agency both a debt validation letter and cease and desist calling letter (you can find the addresses of various agencies on this site). Be sure to send the letters certified mail, return reciept requested!

Mailing these letters gives you a legal advantage. If they do not send you the validation, they can't take you to court, sieze your property and issue threats.

The cease and desist calling letter means that the agency can't call you period (with a few legal exceptions of course).

If they continue to call or leave messages, keep the recorded phone messages, log the time and date of the call and report the violation to the FTC and your state's atorney general's office.

If they continue to harrass you, you can sue the sgency for 1,000 per violation. There are certain instances where you can sue for the amount they are demanding (look up info in this site) If you have the recorded messages and FTC complaints on file, the agencies don't stand a chance in court.

Good luck and always remember to take the high road.

If it was the ogigional creditor, which I thought we established it was, then basically you can't do too much. They can call your cell phone until you prove that it is costing you money for them to do that. You cell phone number was either given by someone you know or you are listed in the cell phone directory or you applied for credit somewhere and they reported your number. They could have also gotten it if you recently changed your address, and put it on the change of address card or applied for a replacement social security card.. or even if you have it on your work application. You address and phone numbers can be reported numbeous ways.

The only way to avoid this is to basically fall off the map. Don't sign any contracts or forms, work cash under the table jobs, never buy anyhting that would cause for you to sign something, don't have any type of banking account, don't rent any residence, never change your address, state to family members to never give out your phone number don't file yearly taxes.

As for the intrest. You lost your low intrest rate on the first payment missed. You also accumulated late fee's as well as possible over the limit fee's.

I can pretty much tell you this. You most likely will not win any damages if you sue. You might get lucky enough to get the to pay it but it's pretty doubtful as it is still with the origional creditor. You might be out some lawyer fee's and still end up paying the debt or haveing it charge off onto your credit report.

I know it sucks but the most you can really do is file a C&D with them and I'm not completely sure they have to honor it as you signed an agreement that they can contact you to collect should you default.

I would suggest letting a credit counseling service negotiate with them. They are better at it but keep in mind that they do not have to accept the proposal. Make sure you get a copy of it if you do get one so that in case the account does get forwarded to a collection agency you can fax or mail a copy to them to show them you have an accepted proposal.

If it does get forwarded to a CA check your records to make sure that all payements are made on time as agreed or it would cause the agreement to be void and futher collection activities will continue.

I know you are trying to help, but the last 2 posts have already been done.

As for legality, under Tx state laws, there is no destinction between original creditors and 3rd party. Tx law was definitely broken, even is Federal wasn't. They cannot call repeatedly from an unlisted line.

That last bit is telling, the first call was listed on the caller id, but on a phone system (I did outgoing calls on another job) like the one they likely have, it means that the employee had to manually dial the number after logging off the company's phone system, otherwise he would have been locked into whatever outgoing call was next in his que. On such a system, an employee assigned to make the qeued calls is NOT allowed to make non-qued calls, which probably explains why he hung up when I asked for a supervisor. Someone may have caught him doing so, or he knew that he would have been caught if he made the transfer.

This implies that he wasn't authorized by the company to make the extra calls, likely being against company policy for him to do so. For him to be on a line where such a call was authorized, then the caller ID would have listed the number again.

All this follows with the Supervisor's response when I called back to make a formal complaint. His sole intent was to piss me off into hanging up, or forgetting about the calls. I can see no other reason for his to demand full payment, including riduculing the good faith payments I had been making before, followed by him claiming that he was turning the matter over to his legal department on a bill that was still less than 2-3 months behind at the time of the calls.

Wow. I tend to go on and on about this one. See what I mean about the stress?

Long story short (Too late!) the debt is completely seperate now. The letters have been sent (no reply to the negotiation one yet), state and fed informed via compaint letters, and all I need is to know how to deal (probably in a civil court) with the calls that were made.

steelblade- I'm still looking for some info pertaining to whether or not/how this can be done, but in the meantime, here's something for you to check into. Many law schools in TX require 3Ls to participate in a public interest pro-bono clinic. Check with the large schools by you and find out if they have one of those programs- you could end up getting legal advice for free and good start as far as paperwork and filing for the suit.

I will look into finding law schools neear here in a day or so. Not sure if we have any, but it won't hurt to look.

Still no response from the supervisor that promised 'to investigate' but that's not really a surprise. Still think he was just trying to piss/scare me off into forgetting about the illegal calls.

The only law schools I have been able to find are in Austin, some 300 miles away. I'll keep looking just in case, hopefully SMU in Dallas has one, but I haven't had any luck finding one there yet.