Sep 29, 2011
This is a collections agency who called my landlord's house phone about a debt of mine, a collections agency that not only had I never heard of before today, but I have never gotten any sort of mail or billing information from, as well as no notification from the originating company that they were transferring my debt to a collection agency. I have only been living at this address for a few months, and I have gotten nothing forwarded from either company from my previous address, as well as never having had a debt collector call my landlord anywhere I have ever lived in my life. Needless to say, I am furious, and so is my landlord, as my name is in no way associated with the house phone, which was only set up for their family emergencies anyway. I don't even have the number, I'm not family. The girl on the phone spoke very softly, did almost nothing to identify that I was actually the person she was looking for, refused to repeat herself when I told her I couldn't hear her, quoted a debt more than twice the amount I actually owed, and then acted like she didn't understand why she should remove my landlord's phone number from the contact records and claimed she didn't know the actual phone number that she called (yet she knew it wasn't my phone number, and sorry, I've worked in outbound call centers, you can see the number even with auto-dialer software, and you do have the option to put in the system that the contact information is incorrect). And yet, somehow, this is legal. Yep, totally legal for them to contact your friends, family, work, and landlord to get YOUR contact information, or "pass along" a message.