I love telephones. I love telephones because it is so easy to hang up on mouth-breathers who think for one microsecond that they resort to abuse, intimidation or obnoxious behavior to get their commission. What am I, chopped liver? No! I'm the Queen of *KISS MY ASS*. I love telephones because I don't even have to answer it when you call The Royal Posterior, unless you're actually worth listening to. Put it in writing, douchebags. Let's see some evidence. If you have my phone number, you have my address.

I don't know about the rest of these, but this one could potentially be a good deal. I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss it!
"You sleep with me and I wont repossess your car" - Repo Man

Anyhow... while your credit is good is the time that you need to take steps in order to prevent debt collectors from calling you.

1. Get a free voicemail number. k7.net is good. There are many others.

2. Tell ALL your creditors that this voicemail # is your home number. Tell them it is also your work number. Yes, you still work for _X_ company, but you telecommute and perform the work from your home. Yes, it is in a different area code, because that is where all your relatives are. This is the number they're going to call when they want to sell you something, and when they want to harass you on a past due bill.

3. Whenever, on a credit application, they ask for the name, number, or address of a relative, know that the only reason they're asking is so that they'll be able to call them to humiliate you. "Hello. I am a debt collector. I am calling for _YOUR NAME HERE_." Do not give them the number of someone you don't want them to call. I'm sure you accidently transposed two of the digits, right?

4. Remember. You're never going to win a prize when your creditors call. Even if you're in good standing. Probably the only helpful time when they call would be to inquire about some purchases, potentially thinking that your card was stolen. But then again, they're pretty much on the hook for that, and not you.

NEVER GIVE ANY CREDITOR YOUR REAL PHONE NUMBER.

A Conn's credit collector was harassing me... We bought a TV from them but returned it one week later, so we never had to pay anything, but no one told the Credit people that. I said, "When are you going to stop harassing me?" after I had explained it for the hundredth time. He said, "Maybe if you start paying your bills we will stop calling you." So I went on a R-Rated tirade after that :)

Never ignore your bills! Why don't people get that? Call the company, offer to set up a payment plan... it usually works. Sure, you pay interest but you aren't hounded by collection agencies either.

@mantari...yeas all debt collectors are just calling to harass you, no one ever just dosent pay their bills right?

is that john bolton on the phone in the photo? i was wondering what he's up to now.

I'm reminded of Best In Show:

"That's the good card. Two notices. We have until TWO NOTICES to pay."

mantari, I never gave out my cell phone number to anyone except friends, family and two clients.... but somehow the collection agencies got it last year when I was having my problems. I've never called any collection agency or creditor on my phone, so they didn't get it in the obvious ways. As soon as one of them did, pretty much all of them started using it.

Even now, I send calls to voicemail if I don't recognize the number and it's outside the area code, or it's blocked. I may do that for the rest of my life. I don't know if they used pretexting or what, but I'm sure it was easy enough to find out that I had a cell phone carrier.... maybe those 2-year service contracts count as an extension of credit somehow. So it may not matter whether you give them your home phone number or not. If I were still having problems, I'd probably have switched to prepaid phones by now.

Any fun discussion of shady debt collector practices should always have a mention of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), and people should take a look over at sections 805 (communication), 806 (Harassment or abuse), 807 (False or misleading representations), 809 (unfair practices)

It would seem that many of these clearly violate the FDCPA.

Oh yeah, (this isn't legal advice and IANYL)

@raindog:

I agree with sending all unknown calls to voicemail. Especially if they are blocked. That sends a big "They must have a reason they don't want me to know who's calling" signal to me. Sometimes I am curious/bored and let one through and it turns out to be a sell of some sort. Thank goodness for the Pamela Call Recorder I have hooked up to my Skype account. Some of the calls are very entertaining to listen to and I forward them to my friends after I am done messing with them.

For example, if you're several thousand in the hole, and you're paying $100/month for cable, you're probably an idiot.

Thank you for that.

@harumph: John Bolton was hanging out on NPR last night dishing about Paul Wolfowitz.

My favorite was "I don't need to go to court. Pay me or I'll personally come take your house." Even if he represents my mortgage company, there are legally prescribed procedures for foreclosing... my answer would be "And I'll personally keep pulling the trigger until the clip is empty. Come on over."

Eh, saying anything is giving them ammunition, but threatening bodily harm puts you in criminal territory.

I think "whatever floats your boat, but I have a shotgun and ammunition" would be more than sufficient.... in making the other guy angrier, not dissuading him from doing what he already had no intention of doing.