How to Find Out Your Debt Collecting Rights
Hello, this is Lev Selecter, founder of 101creditrepair.com, and the topic of this video is, what are your rights when dealing with debt collectors? The good news is that there is a law called fair debt collecting practices act which specifies what are your rights and what debt collectors cannot do. And I highly recommend you to read this document, it’s very short, it’s only 26 pages. And if you go to our website in the resources section you’ll find the link and you can read the law. The reason why it’s important to know your rights is because when debt collectors will start calling you, what you will find from experience is what so many people found that the debt collectors usually are completely ignorant about your rights and they violating and they making your life hell. In many cases those collectors are not even calling from this country, now they are being outsourced and they are trained to apply pressure. And the way they do it, they imply that you are a bad person, because you cannot pay the money back or they threaten you with salary garnishments with imprisonment and they cannot do this by law. Or they use profane language or they threaten to sue you which again is prohibited by law unless they really intend to sue you. You have to know your rights, for example, they cannot call you very early in the morning and before, maybe 8 in the morning and after 9 at night. They cannot call you at work. They cannot call anybody regarding this matter and discuss it, unless they are trying to locate you. And if they are trying to locate you, they should limit their conversation to only this topic, they cannot disclose that the reason why they are trying to locate you is to collect a debt, they cannot tell people that. If they are calling your work, they cannot ask for your work phone number, they cannot ask for the name or phone number of manager or supervisor. They cannot ask for your position or how much money you make. It’s absolutely prohibited by law. But what I found from a personal experience with so many other people found the same that collectors violate the law all the time. They could call you, they could apply pressure, you could tell them to stop, and they continue. You can write them a letter to stop, and well, sometimes it help sometimes it doesn’t. Another tactic you can use, you can escalate to a manager and this sometimes helps, because managers are much more knowledgeable. But again, there’s a no hundred percent proof remedy. What I find works the best is to apply pressure on the person who contacts you, and the way to do it is first of all to ask them to identify themselves. To make a note to ask them to spell their name and their position, to write the date and time of the call and the reason for the call, keep good notes of the conversation. Next thing is to show them that you know your rights and to demand them to stop harassing you and to follow the collection according to the laws and also what a really good thing to do is to record the conversation, to do the audio recording and to tell them explicitly that the conversation will be recorded. Now in some states, it may be illegal to do the recording unless you explicitly say so. But if you tell the person that the conversation will be recorded, it is legal, you can do it, and just knowing that you are recording the conversation will usually stop them from harassing you. So these are several things you can do to make your negotiations with the collectors eaiser. I recommend you to visit our website, 101creditrepair.com, you’ll find there more videos like that, our guides, a lot of information which will help you to improve your credit score. Thank you.