What to Do When Collectors Keep Calling Someone Else

I have had the same phone number since 2003 and my father had used the same phone number for at least five years before that. As far as my identity is concerned, my phone number is above my first AOL Instant Messenger username and somewhere just below my social security number.

But in the last decade or so, I got calls from a couple I’ll call Dee and Donnie. I know from looking up the last name, which comes up a lot when I answer a call, they live in Pennsylvania, where I grew up, and that they are in their sixties. And, as far as I understand, at some point they owed someone a lot of money. I get a call from a debt collector looking for Dee or Donnie to rent once a month.

Their names also pop up when I buy cat food from PetSmart and provide my phone number for a discount at checkout. “Di?” the cashier always asks before I correct her. I’m not Dee. Even if Dee had this phone number before he entered my family’s cell phone list in the mid-90s, how could he still be on the debt collector registries, let alone a pet store?

Every time I tell the caller, Dee or Donnie “was never reachable on that phone number.” But I always wondered if I should do something differently so that these calls would stop once and for all.

I explained my predicament to David Reischer, attorney and CEO of LegalAdvice.com .

None of the debt collectors who called me looking for Dee or Donnie broke the rules protecting people from debt collection claims. In accordance with the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, debt collectors cannot call until 8 am or after 9 pm. They don’t follow me. When I say they have the wrong number, they apologize.

Reischer said I still have consumer rights that might come in handy here: “But your options are limited by the practicality of having to explain to each collection agency that you are not the person involved in these debts.”

He provided this template for answering phone calls asking you to collect a debt from someone you don’t know:

“I am not in debt. I am not the person you are looking for. This phone number is mistakenly associated with the actual person who incurred the debt. Please don’t call me again. “

You can also contact us by mail. If you are asking for the contact information of the debt collection agency that called you, you can send a letter stating what you said on the phone and asking you not to call your phone number again. Reischer referred to section 1692c (a) (C) of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, which states that a person can, in writing, ask the debt collector to stop trying to contact him. In addition to confirming your request by mail, they will not be able to contact you again unless they take action, such as filing a claim against you.

“The agency should stop calling you on the phone, even if you are not the person in debt,” Reischer said. But you still have to submit a written request to each individual debt collection agency that calls you by mistake – there is no massive “unsubscribe”.

Even putting me on the Do Not Call list will not stop the debt collectors, Reischer said, as the registry was created to restrict telemarketing, not debt collection.

Answer, correct, send a letter, repeat. This is a practical solution to my day to day calls, but it doesn’t solve the puzzle.

Phone numbers are constantly being processed and transferred to new accounts. Your first few months with a new phone number are likely rife with calls to the wrong number. Twenty years ago, it may not have been so difficult to endure those few months. But now that our phone number is used for identification , whether it’s online two-step verification or accessing a loyalty program at a grocery store, you may feel vulnerable.

So I still want to know who Dee and Donnie are and how their lives somehow got tangled up in my phone number.

I tried every phone number I found on the Internet associated with a pair, but all lines were disconnected except one. This live number went to voicemail, the name of which was not listed in the outgoing message. I left a message, but they didn’t call me back.