Debt collectors like to call and threaten you, saying that you’d better pay up or they will put you in jail, take your money out of your bank account, or sue you, amongst other things.

Threats likes these are illegal and in reality, most of them are lies. They can threaten to sue you but only if they really intend on pursuing a lawsuit.

Any type of threat is breaking the FDCPA (Fair Debt Collection Practices Act). You should read your rights and always write down who you are speaking to, or record your conversation if it is legal to do that in your state.

They love to call and leave anonymous messages stating that they have an important phone call for you to return. They like to leave out the part that they are a bill collector trying to get money out of you so, you call them back thinking this is an important phone call.

From what I’ve learned, debt collectors use the following tricks:

• They send you a bill and after you send them a dispute notice, they follow up with a lawsuit instead of validating the debt


• They like to increase the amount of your bill, adding all kinds of fees but have no documentation to back up their claim. They just hope you are ignorant and don’t respond to your summons.


• They cannot stand people who respond to their summons because of the extra work, so they will then try and confuse you with discovery by asking you trick questions. Trick questions might be the same question disguised with different words. They hope to take advantage of you by using your answers to their interrogatories or request to admit facts.

Debt collectors do not really have many tricks up their sleeves. They just like to do things illegally and sue people. Some collectors like to take you straight to arbitration and yet cannot prove that there was an arbitration clause in your customer agreement.

To sum it all up, they buy your old credit card accounts, have no documentation, like to scare you into thinking that they do and will do anything to get you to settle.

If you are smart and know your rights, then you will not have a problem when dealing with these debt collectors.

Additional Information

• Tina

  “Well the 3rd debt collector in the process filed a suit for twice the debt. 71k is the suit. I hired an attorney to file a writ of Champerty because in PA you can’t buy a debt and then turn around and sue for profit. You also can’t sue for profit anyway. Only what you are out. So now the debt collector wants to arbitrate. I told my attorney I might be willing to arbitrate based on what they paid for the debt. I know they didn’t pay 71k. Probably more like 5 cents on the dollar. So I want him to have them send evidence of what they paid for it. If they cannot provide that then how can they sue? They have to show proof. I also said go to the collector that sold it to this one and find out what it was sold for. This way you have the evidence in arbitration incase they attempt to provide false documents. The paperwork I received by the sheriff was interesting because they had blacked out the screen that had my account information with them. Which I am sure showed what little information they had on me as well as paid 7100 for the debt. That is why they blacked it out. They didn’t want me to know. So we shall see what my attorney comes back with.”