<p>I just received a call from a certain banks Dealer Services branch. They wanted to get the phone number or contact information for my neighbor who they say drives a specific model of car.</p>
<p>It sounds to be like he is not making payments and they are trying to talk with him to get him to make payments. When I told them I don’t know him or his information (which is true) they hassled me a for a little while. “Well, he lives next door, doesn’t he?” (No, he lives a 1/2 mile away and I don’t know him)…and then eventually they decided to let me go.</p>
<p>Isn’t it rather unprofessional to call neighbors for this kind of information? I’m getting tired of unimportant phone calls. I get a lot of bill collectors calling for people I’ve never heard of, telephone surveys, and the like.</p>
<p>I did…unfortunately, surveys are exempt. Nonprofits are exempt. And apparantly, banks calling neighbors to get contact information are exempt as well.</p>
<p>Just hang up! My pet peeve is the myriad of police-sounding orgs which may not be legit. - the do not call thing doesn’t apply to non-profits apparently.</p>
<p>How do you know they are the real branch? In general, giving away the private information of another party is a bad idea. It could be a valid request or it could be for a scam, robbery, etc. If they really want his phone number, they should go to his property, knock on his door and ask.</p>
<p>Alternately, you could just tell the bank to send you a check for $500 and you’ll ask him for his phone number the next time you see him.</p>
<p>It probably is a valid request. My sibling has a dead beat ex wife. Been divorced 15 years or more. Second sibling still gets calls from bill collectors looking for her. Tells them over and over that we have no contact and haven’t for umpteen years.</p>
<p>We have an answering machine for our landline and my understanding is that more and more households are going to mobile phones and just leaving an answering machine or other call-screening service on their landlines. We will pick up if we recognize the caller but I’m giving out my mobile and google voice numbers to contacts instead of the home phone. Google Voice will screen callers that aren’t in my contact list and they can leave a message if they want to.</p>
<p>There are some interesting society and technology books out there on the societal changes brought about by mobile phones - basically they keep you closer to the people that you are already close to.</p>
<p>We had months of phone calls by a debt collection agency trying to track down a relative we have very little contact with. No idea how they linked us to her unless they went through the city phone book calling everyone with the same last name (though she has not lived in the same town in decades). Told them we had no contact but they kept on calling. Really annoying. And my son had several from an agency trying to track down an ex girlfriend of his. Really ticked him off as they kept calling at 8 a.m. and he is not a morning person. And he kept telling them she was an ex and he was no longer in contact. Never had one for a neighbor yet. I would be ticked.</p>
<p>I think I’m just tired of other people who haven’t paid their bill.</p>
<p>For whatever the reason, my number has been called by at least 25 bill collectors in the last six months trying to collect on five or six different people’s debts. I tell them those people don’t live here, and then they call back again and again and again.</p>
<p>It’s bad enough that I am going to write to my congressmen and women and see if they can enact some legislation to reign in the collectors. I pay my bills on time and shouldn’t be bugged because somebody who chose not to wrote down my number instead of their own.</p>
<p>Dealer Services branch - I’ve been a banker for 25 years and never heard that term. It is mostly likely “code” for an outsourced collection/repo outfit attempting collect either the debt or the vehicle. Banks make loans and virtually all will handle the 30 and 60 day past due calls, but many don’t directly handle serious deliquencies or repo’s.</p>
<p>Why do folks take calls from people that they don’t know? Let an answering machine take the call if you don’t recognize the number. On my mobile phone, I associate pictures with people on my contact list. If I don’t see a picture on my phone, it goes straight to voice-mail. I do see the missed call list and I will often just look that up on the web. Invariably it’s a marketing scam, debt collector or political push-poll.</p>
<p>Or if you want to take the call, just charge $10 to talk to them.</p>
<p>I remembered that Dave Ramsey covered this. Ther eis a Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. Here is the summary: </p>
<p>Dave Ramsey, tells of abusive practices and the violation of Federal law incorporated by debt collectors – particularly credit card debt collectors. Most people do not know that they have rights guaranteed to them by the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) and debt collectors knowingly and habitually break these laws in order to frighten them into paying.</p>
<p>IT IS NOT AGAINST THE LAW TO OWE MONEY!</p>
<p>Do not allow yourself to be lied to (example: “You’re going to go to jail if you don’t pay this” is one of their favorites!) or treated without the dignity you deserve.</p>
<p>KNOW YOUR RIGHTS UNDER THE FDCPA:</p>
<p>Collectors can NOT call you before 8 am or after 9 pm</p>
<p>Collectors can NOT threaten to have you arrested or charged with a crime if you dont pay</p>
<p>Collectors can NOT continue to call after you have indicated you want them to stop (record your conversation with them, tell them you ARE recording it, write the date and time down in a journal, and follow up with a certified letter stating they may no longer call.)</p>
<p>Collectors can NOT call friends, family members or colleagues repeatedly in order to get you to pay (they may call your acquaintances ONCE in order to track you down and may NOT mention that you owe money or give ANY information that would lead someone to believe that they are attempting to collect a debt. </p>
<p>According to Dave if you tell the collections company that you are familiar with this act and that if you are called again you will report them the WILL quit calling.</p>
<p>Not my bill. That’s the whole problem. I don’t owe anybody any money. It’s people that open fradulent credit cards make up a telephone number on the application, and for some reason they are putting down my number instead.</p>
<p>Really, I wasn’t suggesting that anyone not pay their bill. What I was indicating is that there is a law in place to protect people from being harassed. Particularly if you are a neighbor/former relative/etc. of someone who is being pursued by collections. That is what the second to last paragraph of my post was pointing everyone toward.</p>
<p>Bill Gates talked about this many years ago where phone systems would evolve so that your phone service would take calls from unknown people for a fee - they would enter their credit card information or the phone company would charge them for the opportunity to talk to you. It never came about because phone companies like you spending money to receive spam phone calls and text messages. But services like google voice, and certain mobile phone features are making it easier to avoid calls that you aren’t interested in.</p>
<p>Went through my Google Voice received calls this morning and added two spam calls to my block list. What would be nice is a global spam phone number list that phone users could use as a blacklist for incoming calls. Sort of like antivirus for phones.</p>
<p>I get calls almost daily wanting to collect money for people I do not know. I rarely answer the phone if it’s not from a number I recognize. Out of the history on our caller ID at any given time, I would bet that 95% or more of the calls are bill collectors (not looking for any of us!) or surveys.</p>
<p>My favorite thing is that these companies leave a message: “This is a private message for Jane Doe. If you are not Jane Doe, hang up and do not listen to this message.” Really? They leave a message on my answering machine, and then they are ordering me not to listen to it? I know they are just trying to cover themselves for privacy rules violations, but it just strikes me as funny.</p>