Litebulb ripoff?

Countrywide Finance (One of the crooks in the current mortgage scandals) was looking for someone who used to have my phone number over five years ago and defaulted on a home loan. They called over 100 times. At first I was polite and told them I didn't know the person they were looking for, that I wasn't at the address they were looking for, but refused to help them locate him. Then they stared calling and asking for Michael, not the full name. I get a lot of calls that people recognize my voice and start their conversation that way. Then they would give the full name, still not identifying themselves. I would tell them they had the wrong number and hang up. The last time I screamed at them so much they haven't called back. It took me three days to find a working phone number for their local office. Their website listed six numbers, all disconnected, and five more in the phone book that didn't work. When I finally did reach their office I got their voice mail. I reamed them a new one, and told them if I got one more call, I was not only suing the corporation, but everyone who worked at the local office. I kept yelling till the voice mail timed out. It has been almost a year, and they haven't called back.

Now, some asshole is giving people my phone number, and I am getting automated calls that he is late paying his bills. I tracked him down in the county property records, and am thinking about going to his house in the middle of the night to wake him up, then tell him to get his s*it together before I file a complaint. That, or email the IRS & FBI his name & address, and tell them he is trying to hide something by giving out false information. :)

Don't assume that the homeowner is at fault, or even knows.

I get dunning calls from time to time, and it's always in error. The collection agencies check nothing out, instead expecting you to prove that you don't owe. In a few cases, I've had to threaten a suit to get them to stop calling. Objecting to the harassment also helps.

Joe Gwinn

Multiple comapnies are looking for him, and he has given some of them my street address, as well.

On Tue, 16 Sep 2008 01:41:13 +0000 (UTC), with neither quill nor qualm, snipped-for-privacy@green.rahul.net (Edward A. Falk) quickly quoth:

They called me. Dumb, huh?

-- Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness. -- George Sand

They don't expect anything because they don't listen to you no matter what the truth is or what you say. These are not collection agencies in the old-fashioned sense of following up on slow payers. They're simply suckers themselves in the business of extorting money by harassing people en masse from a list of names they bought from somebody who largely invented the list. For them to listen and analyze what you say would be too expensive. Everybody gets the same treatment, whether or not they've found the right person or the debt is valid, which in my case is never true. Yet I still get multiple calls daily. The harassment is minor enough that no one defends themselves forcefully from it, and the collective nuisance is nobody's business to deal with. They're literally beggaring for a living.

Machine calling was supposed to have been outlawed, but now they've even gotten around that with some loophole. Truly sick. The guy who innovated this should be in prison.

Why do people believe they should be paid for effort, as opposed to creating value?

I've found that counter-threats of legal action work, or simply inviting them to sue, where they will get to prove to a real Judge that I owe. This usually convinces them that I will be more trouble that the debt is worth.

And it steals their main threat, which very much changes the tone of the conversation.

Joe Gwinn

Assuming they're listening, which they're not. It's like talking to spammers. And working yourself up into a lather about lawsuits over phone calls is not wholesome.

Please don't confuse strategy with mouth-foaming.

Joe Gwinn

My point is simply that the soliciting/bill-collection scum ringing my phone oughta be horsewhipped, but it's not worth raising my heart rate to so much as engage in a conversation with them, much less get confrontational.

Yeah, I could threaten, or actually sue them for a $1K federal violation, but life would be pretty grim doing that for a living. And no doubt they are judgment-proof.

We use caller ID to filter calls at home -- if we don't recognize the caller, we don't answer, and let the answering machine handle it. Boiler rooms leave no messages.

One or two unrecognized numbers kept coming up on caller ID, so out of curiosity I answered.

One turned out to be the American Cancer Society, looking for a donation. I told them that we are on the Do Not Call list, and they replied that nonprofits were exempt. I answered that we would not be giving, and please take us off their lists. My tone of voice was not friendly. They agreed; we'll see.

Actually, our policy is to never buy anything or give money for any reason to anyone who cold calls. Or sends us junk mail for that matter.

Aside from not wanting to reward people for being annoying, a good fraction of such offers are fraudulent in some degree, and there is no way to tell good from bad from a phone call.

I'd prefer to bankrupt them.

Then there are no human-interest stories in the media rattling on about what a terrible end it was, the poor devil being buried under a ton of salt, and who could have been so cruel to have done such a thing.

Joe Gwinn

My interpretation was that the human-interest story would be about the "poor devil" having to pick bits of rock salt out of his ass.

Joe

The one that really get to me are the ones that ring the doorbell despite the "no soliciting" sign, then argue that they are not soliciting. At this point I demonstrate that I AM capable of throwing them across the property line onto the city road allowance. Had one come back a couple hours latter to continue the discussion with second son who has a shorter fuse that the old man. Gerry :-)} London, Canada

Still, it's a nuisance, having the interruption of a phone ring from someone you don't want to hear from. If it were an occasional wrong number or other "honest" mistake then it wouldn't matter, but multiple calls per day from phony collection agents I'll never tolerate.

We use caller ID as well. All it does it pre-advise that an annoyance call is disturbing your concentration.

It gets to me that anyone would think not having a "no soliciting" sign would default to a "solicit all you like" sign.

Still, I find them somewhat more tolerable, like junk postal mail, because it costs some time and effort for them to be there. Unlike machine phone call spammers.

Myself, I've gotten into a calm routine that I recite to them as grey- haired advice about how they should find honest work creating value instead of hustling. Otherwise I am tempted to get rude with the ladies, but no doubt there's nothing to shock or frighten them if they've been calling strangers for any length of time with a feminine voice.

I had one occasion when I was standing near the door and a candidate in the municipal election looked at the sign and said "I guess that means me, may I leave my flyer?" He got my vote for having shown that he could think! Gerry :-)} London, Canada