Leverage the internet in your war against debt collectors.
The Internet is a fabulous tool to find out information about debt collectors. Once you find out the collection agency’s name in your phone number search, you can run a Google search by the company’s name.
In more than one instance, I’ve found dirt on a collection agency that I ultimately used to make them stop calling. Many years ago, a debt collector started harassing me over a gym membership from several years prior that I had cancelled pursuant to the termination provisions in the contract.
When I ran a search on the internet, I quickly learned that the debt collection agency had been sued by the Georgia Attorney General’s office and paid a ridiculous fine for a regulatory violation.
The next time they called, I mentioned that I knew they had been fined by a state’s attorney general and threatened to contact the attorney general’s office to let them know that the fine apparently wasn’t enough because they continued to violate the law.
A few weeks later I received a nice little note apologizing for the harassing phone calls and stating that they had removed me from their database. I never heard from them again.
DISCLAIMER:
****CHRISTINE SPRINGER IS NOT A LICENSED ATTORNEY OR FINANCIAL ADVISOR. THIS BLOG IS COMPRISED OF HER OPINIONS, OBSERVATIONS AND INTERPRETATIONS AND IS NOT INTENDED TO BE CONSTRUED AS LEGAL ADVICE. PLEASE CONSULT WITH AN ATTORNEY BEFORE RELYING ON OR TAKING ANY ACTION BASED ON THE INFORMATION IN THIS BLOG.****
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