Debt Collector Harassment....Imagine Doing this for a Living!
In our constant effort to keep pace with the latest developments in debt collector psychosis, we find the following incidents. If you're looking for debt collector harassment, you don't have to search much further.
First a brief review: The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) governs the collection of consumer debt. Among the prohibited tactics, for example, are threats. Debt collectors can't threaten consumers, physically or financially, and, they can't threaten to take any action which they are not legally permitted to take.
Let's see if these qualify:
Threats to dig up dead relatives! It doesn't get any better than this. The debt collector, collecting an unpaid funeral bill, threatened to dig up the debtors' recently deceased children, and hang the bodies from a tree outside the debtors' front door if the bill wasn't paid right away. I told you this was good. So good, in fact, that it won an award of $700,000......for the debtor.
In this next one, the kids are still alive.
Threatening to take away children. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) brought a complaint against a debt collector who reportedly told a consumer over the phone: "We can take you to jail if you don't pay now. We will send the sheriff to your work and drag you out the door. And while you're in jail, the police will take away your children."
Hey, end of the day, a guy still needs to put bread on the table.
Here's another proven fundraiser: loss of liberty.
Threatening Arrest. For a $300.00 debt which the consumer said she had already paid, the debt collector called her workplace and told her co-workers that the consumer was going to be arrested, and that they would have to come down to the station and pick her out of a lineup.
Although this makes absolutely no sense, you're not likely to be a critical thinker, when your crime causes co-workers such an inconvenience, and places you squarely center stage. (Though, in fact, you may second from the left)
Finally, there is one episode of debt collector abuse that is so "off-the-charts" twisted, so disgusting that I don't feel comfortable passing it along here. So we'll just skip it.
I mean, it is so sick, that one hesitates to give it life by mentioning it.....
I've thought about this a lot, and I just can't......
Well, okay:
The FTC reports that collectors allegedly threatened to kill a debtor's dog if she didn't pay. And not just kill. Specifically, the collectors told a woman that they would have her dog "arrested, then shoot him, and eat him" if she didn't pay.
Keep in mind that, in order to protect her dog from this grisly fate, all the consumer had to do was pay. But c'mon, that would be wrong. Also, the FTC used the word "allegedly", so it probably, really, never happened. Right?
I mean, come on. Debt collectors don't say stuff like that.
