I would recommend sending the cease letter certified return receipt. In the letter identify that they have the wrong person and you do not know the person they are looking for.

If you know the people’s names you spoke to and the dates where they insist you know the person they are looking for list it.

If they call you after the cease letter, I would get a consumer rights attorney. Bud Hibbs is the top guy in Texas, and if you need to find a reputable attorney in another state, Hibbs can hook you up and help you find someone.

Your out of pocket costs to sue them … nothing… Just start documenting every communication, any health issues, stress, or reactions your mom has that is adversely affecting her health.. document doctors visits pertaining to the stress they cause… etc.

I sent a letter to NCO’s top cheese and they stopped calling (looking for the wrong person) pretty quick.

I had problems with other junk debt buyers and successfully sued

They call at least 4 times daily. Haven’t called for months, but have started again after repeated verbal requests to stop. They told me they needed my name – is that something they HAVE to have? I would send a cease letter, but don’t want them to have either of our names or address. HELP! They previously told me they would continue to call until I gave them my name – huh? And they keep insisting I know this person trying to get me to say I do – I don’t…

First, Your grammar and spelling only shows how uneducated you are.
Second, Yes I was sued by an attorneys office on a NCO collections debt.
I represented myself in civil court. To make a long story short, the attorney for NCO could not prove their case in court. He did not have all the chain of ownership affidavits transferring the debt from the original creditor to NCO. The judge dissmissed the case WITH prejudice.
I got a real laugh out of your post Mr. Martin.

P.S. To everyone else here, if your sued show up in court and fight. Even you you were to some how lose your no worse off. If you dont show up they win automatically.
These scum BUY the debt from your original creditor for pennies on the dollar. Not alwasy receiving all the paperwork to prove their case in a court of law. Never give them any information!!!!! The are not prepared to fight you in court, The are relying on you to not show up in court. Always refer to the debt you owe as ALLEGED DEBT in court. Never make a payment or promise of payment if the debt is past the statue of limitations in your state. That means the debt is time barred / can’t be collected in a court of law. If it is time barred it is your responsibility to bring that to the judges attention.
If they sue you on a time barred account you can sue them back for doing it.

How do you judge whether the 113 complaints on this board alone are ALL valid debts?

My problem with NCO started with multiple harassing calls and inappropriate communications with a 14 year old. They kept insisting she was someone else and demanding money. I was a temporary guardian of my niece while both parents were deployed at the same time for several months.

I took the phone during one of the calls. I found out the name of the person they were looking for, the amount of the alleged debt, and who it was owed to. I told them to stop harassing the girl they had the wrong number and we did not know the people they were looking for. I was told I was lying and that we were “all going to jail”.

I wrote a letter of complaint to the company and they decided to knock it off.

Almost a year later, I receive in the mail a collection letter from NCO with my name on it, but referencing the dollar amount and original creditor that they were harassing my niece about.

I sent a second letter asking for additional information on the bill from NCO that identifies who the owner of the account is. I contacted the original creditor and they searched through all of their records and had no bill in my name. I gave them the account number from the bill.

The original creditor sent a letter confirming I did not owe them any money in that collection matter and I was not the account holder, nor had I ever resided at the address the account holder lived at.

I called NCO out and threatened to sue because it was apparent someone took it upon themselves to take my name and address off that letter and change it on that debt.

Where do you find that to be legal or valid? It’s not.

I think the company plays fast and loose with the law because most people do not know their rights and they US Government does not enforce the laws already in place, you have to sue independently. The reality is, anyone who has a career and is working who is ensnared in their trap does not have the time to prepare for a case, do all the legwork, and take off work for court dates to get justice.

The fines for violations needs to be increased to more than $1,000. That’s a slap on the wrist and not a deterrent. For those who think it is $1,000 for each individual violation, think again it does not work that way.

One of the problems is that in the US, banks are required under the Patriot’s Act to “Know Your Customer” requiring them to collect personal identifiable information in an effort to detect as a matter of standard security practices. Banks are required to bond all employees (running fingerprints and criminal background checks) to protect that information and maintain the integrity of the banking institution.

Where the laws fall short is that there are NO LAWS requiring the bank to KNOW THEIR VENDOR or other third party agent that they do business with.

Collection agencies are not required to do criminal background checks nor employee bonding, leaving your identity up for grabs. There was a case in Buffalo a few years back where the collector gathered debit card information and pin numbers, and eventually arrested for credit card fraud.

Agencies that violate FDCPA, in my opinion, have no desire to follow consumer protection laws. People get collection letters that reference bills not belonging to them, beyond the statute of limitations, and even in my case where NCO claimed to represent a bank that put in writing they have never done business with NCO and they had no record of the alleged account.

If the original creditors were held financially accountable for these illegal practices by third party agents, how fast do you think these disreputable agencies would shape up or go out of business?

Think about that agency in Buffalo a few years back where people used a debit card to pay by phone and the collector used that card information and information gathered to collect the debt to commit acts of credit card fraud and identity theft.

And it goes beyond collections and includes call centers. One US based company was using an overseas call center to reduce costs and increase business. It was one those catalog order companies where people called in and placed a credit card order. Consumer names, addresses, and credit information was sold by that overseas company. It was not illegal to do that in the company. All the consumers had a number of erroneous charges on their credit card going to some web based company in Cypress, a known money laundering country in the banking world. The question came up why wasn’t the US based company held liable. The issue went dead real quick and dropped off the newfront as quick as it popped up.

Moral of the story is, know who you do business with. Verify Verify and Verify again that the company is legit and the debt is legit.

Many banks and bank cards are answering the call to stop this kind of fraud by allowing you to go on line to issue a temporary credit card number and pin. When you make your purchase or pay your bill it will go through. If anyone tries to use that number/pin again… it will decline.

This is just starting to come out and not all banks have it in place.. but it’s worth checking out.