subject: Fair Debt Collection Practices Act – Know Your Debt Relief Rights [print this page] Dealing with creditors and debt collection agencies is definitely a tough ordeal. Their annoying and persistence manner of tracking you down regardless of where you are could be very frustrating for you, your family and even your fellow colleagues.
Thankfully, to protect the overly abused debtors, there's the Fair Debt Practices Act or the FDCPA in short. It's a federal law that bans unfair debt collection practices which will affect the quality of debtors' life considerably.
While this article does not list the entire act, it is good to know the common illegal debt collection practices in order that you will not be intimidated and know how you can deal with them.
1. Contact third parties including your families, friends, neighbors or employers about your debt. Unless the court has given them permission for your creditors to do this, it is illegal for them to contact third parties about your debt. But they may contact third parties for the purpose of locating you. Even so, creditors must not discuss why they are looking for you, except if you are a minor.
2. Contact you at unusual hours of the day - late night or too early in the morning. Within normal circumstances, any time between 8am to 9pm is an acceptable time for them to call. Under no situation should your creditors contact you when you're sleeping, for example at 3am.
3. Contacting you over and over again by telephone or not identifying themselves when they call.
4. Continue to contact you when you are represented by a lawyer or when they have received a written request from you to cease calling you. ( a cease letter)
5. Make threats, make use of obscene, profane or abusively languages and comments on you.
6. Misleading you that they're affiliated with any state or federal government, or the legal status of your debts.
These are only some of the common illegal debt collection practices. The FDCPA bans just about any abusive, dishonest and unfair debt collection practices that may affect the quality of your life significantly.
To discover much more with regards to your rights as a debtor, go to www.ftc.gov/os/statutes/fdcpa/fdcpact.htm for more information. It's always great to know your rights as they give you a means of handling your creditors such that they don't exploit you. Nevertheless, realize that the purpose of the FDCPA would be to assist you to deal with creditors and not to ignore them and your debts.
Fair Debt Collection Practices Act Know Your Debt Relief Rights
