What exactly are your rights when dealing with a collection agency? How do you know whether or not what they are doing to you is wrong, or if there is a law that protects you from some of the harassment they are treating you with? Here are a few things you should know about the law concerning collection agencies, and what instances in which you can rebuke them for not abiding by those rules of law.

1. Calling Hours

Collection agencies cannot call you between seven in the morning and nine at night. If they call anytime before or after these hours, they are breaking the law. If this occurs, call them on it, make a complaint, and make sure that they see that you know the rules and will hold them to those rules.

2. Calling You from Work

If a collection agency calls you at your job, it is only legal if your employer approves. If your employer approves of the calls, then they are not going against the rules to call you during your work hours at your office or job site. If you have a problem with it and would like the phone calls to stop while you are at work, take it up with your employer, because he is the one who holds the power to stop them from calling.

3. Frequent Calls

If collection agencies are calling on a frequent basis, this may be considered harassment. Keep a record of the time and dates on which you are called by collection agencies. If you want to make a formal complaint against a collection agency’s harassment concerning this, you must have these records to give as information to prove that they have been calling too frequently.

4. Same Creditor Calls

Perhaps you may not understand how frequent is too frequent. A collection agency cannot call you more than three times a week on behalf of the same creditor, or lender that you owe the money to. Anytime you get more than three calls a week, all concerning the same credit card debt you hold, you may make a formal complaint against the collection agencies for harassment.

5. Contacting Others

When a collection contacts your neighbors, friends, family, or employers, the only information they are allowed to ask of those people is your telephone number or your mailing address. Any other questions they may ask concerning information about you are against the law, and can be disputed. Your family and friends are not required to give the collections any information, and should not give information to them that was asked about illegally.

Perhaps the collection agencies are asking you a bunch of information that you do not want to give them. But what CAN they ask you that is legal, and not considered harassment? How many of the questions that they ask you do you have to answer, and how much information can you hold back without getting into trouble?

Honestly, you have rights that protect you from giving ANY information to collection agencies. However, this may not always be the smartest thing to do. Ignoring your problems will not make them go away, but confronting them and negotiating will help you to solve them more easily.

1. Bank Account Information

Do not give collection agencies access to your bank account, no matter what they tell you and no matter how much they try to persuade you, they do not need your bank account information to help you settle your debt with your creditors. There are several scam artists out there who claim to be collection agencies who will ask for this information not to help you, but only to drain your bank account and leave you even more broke than you were before.

2. Be Polite

In any case, it is beneficial to be polite to the collection agency. No matter how mad you want to get at them because they are TRYING to provoke anger in you (mainly because it can be used against you in court if you continue to neglect paying your bills), getting angry will not help the matter but only make it worse. You should be polite and patient with the collection agencies, just as you would like them to be patient and work with you. In other words, DON’T say anything to them that would give them reason to sue you in court.

3. Give Information that Will Benefit You

If there is something that the collection agency asks of you that will help you to work out a plan to pay the money back, give it to them. You need to be cooperative so that you can work out a solution to the problem at hand, otherwise the problem is only going to get worse. Let the collection agency know just how much you can afford to pay each month until you have worked it out, and ask them if they can work out a plan that will alow you to do so.

Dealing with collection agencies doesn’t have to be a hassle. It can be easy if you are willing to be reasonable with them and keep the conversation at a civilized level, rather than a heated yelling match. They can help you if you ask for it, or they can make your life totally miserable otherwise.

Perhaps you have even written a letter to the collection agency telling them to stop contacting you. Though this will not make your debt go away, it is required of them to stop calling you under the Federal Debt Collection Practices Act, or the FDCPA. However, they still have not stopped calling you and harassing you about paying your bills.

Finally, you get fed up with it. After learning more about the FDCPA, you discover that what the collection agency that has been contacting you is doing a number of things that are illegal. So, you decide to be prepared next time the call, and you write down generally everything that was said, what time they called, and who you spoke with. Now what?

You believe that you have enough information to make a formal complaint in court. Still, what exactly do you do to go about suing a collection agency? What steps should you take that would better ensure that your case gets the attention that it needs, and that you actually get somewhere with it, rather than just biding your time and temporarily averting attention from your debt?

Here are a few things you should do when filing a complaint against a collection agency:

1. Save the Proof

One of the things that will help you the most when filing a formal complaint is proof. You should have evidence of the harassment you are getting from the collection agencies, like the time and date of which you spoke on the phone with someone from a collection agency, who that person was, and maybe even a recording of the phone call if you may have it. You will also want a copy of any threatening letters that may have been sent to you by the collection agency.

2. File Abuse

Once you have the proof, now is time to take legal action against the collection agency. You do this by writing a formal complaint letter to your state attorney general’s office letting them know specifically what the problem is. Do not beat around the bush. Let them know exactly how the collection agency has violated your rights and where those specific rights and rules are cited in the FDCPA. If you do not state the specific violation and give them the proof of it, your case will not be taken seriously and cannot be considered legitimate.

3. The Better Business Bureau

Also, you probably want to report the actions of the collection agency to the Better Business Bureau. They may also be of some help to you in this matter. Though you may file a complaint to both your attorney general’s office and the BBB, your best option, of choosing between the two, would be the attorney general’s office.

Not only are collection agencies prohibited from suing you, but you are NOT prohibited from suing THEM. There are certain circumstances in which you may feel you have been wronged by a collection agency. If you feel this way, that the law has been broken by something that the collection agency has done or said to you, then you can file a formal complaint and take that collection agency to court.

The thing that collection agencies are most commonly sued for is harassment. Harassment is prohibited by the law when collection agencies are trying to reach the person who owes the money. Here are a few examples of harassment that you have the power to sue for if you are under similar circumstances.

Excessive Phone Calls

If a collection agency is calling you several times a week on behalf of the same creditor, or because of the same form of credit to which you are indebted to and have failed to pay on time, they are breaking the law. Collection agencies are not allowed to contact anyone more than three times a week to inquire about the same overdue payment. If something like this occurs, track the date and the time at which you were called each time, and then you will have proof once you make a formal complaint against them in court.

Threats

Some collection agencies threaten the people that they call to attach their wages in order to get the debt paid. This is illegal only if they are only making hollow threats and do not really intend to do so. If they really do take action to legally attach your wages to get the debt paid, then there is no valid reason for you to sue them. Make sure that you have proof that they did not fully intend to do that before you file a complaint, otherwise you will lose.

Make Sure Your Complaint is Valid

When you take a collection agency to court intending to sue them, you must make sure that the complaint you are filing against them is valid enough for you to have a strong case. If you go to court and do not have proof of harassment and a legitimate explanation of exactly what happened, with detail to back your story up, you will not be persuasive enough to win the case. It is up to you to track and monitor how you are being treated by collection agencies, and if you find fault in this treatment, use it as proof against them for their crime.