You have never met Joe Smith ever in your life yet you keep getting calls for him day and night. These calls are from collection agencies. Sometimes they are nice and other times they are downright mean and often idiotic. They call you a liar when you say you are not Joe Smith. Others hang up and call right back. Yet others are ridiculous enough to tell you the only way you can verify you are not Joe Smith is to give them your social security number. Ultimately you get mad and curse them out before finally giving in and changing your number.
Here is why this happens and the steps that lead up to you getting calls day and night:
- Collection agency buys or receives file X to collect on
- They skip trace the file which means they run a search through a third party or the yellow pages to find the debtors phone numbers
- They start calling these numbers in order to locate the debtor
- This is the point where you get angry and annoyed to the point where many sue the collection agencies
Next collection agency receives file X and they also skip trace the file. However there are only a few companies out there so the odds are high they are using the same company as the previous collection agencies have used.
The problem here is that the companies selling the data refuse to have any safeguards or processes in place to fix wrong numbers. CBC Innovus said they would help but Experian is another story. I have tried contacting a number of people within their organization and I get nowhere.
In a nutshell you are getting called day and night because data sellers are selling data over and over again. This data, for a person you never met, has your phone number attached to it.
SOLUTIONS:
- Get a new number.
- Sue the data sellers until they have processes in place to remove your number from someone else information.
- Sue the collection agency but this is not a permanent fix and not really their fault. Plus, it is the lawyer that will get most of the money, not you.