Useless Conversation

[Selby]

How many times do I have to tell the collection agency that calls my landline that there's no Carlos here, I don't know any Carlos, stop fucking calling me before I get big money?

I just told them he died and it was quite tragic (bleeding from the mouth and rectum, looked terminal) and that they would need a seance to contact him and get their money.

My annoyance is when they call and ask if I'm sure and maybe if I could look around the house I'd find him.  Like I'm going to go open the closet door and find some dude living there who I've never seen before...

Right now I've got Kaiser Permanente calling me every few weeks to let me know someone whose name I can't pronounce has an appointment down in Los Angeles.  It's a computer, so I have no retribution against them or way to make them change.  The one time I did get a live person, they were profusely apologetic and said they would change it (after asking me 4 times if I was sure Aryan Moreno didn't live with me and if she was a friend of mine or not) yet here we are a year on and I still get the phone calls.

[Merusk]

Collections people are used to getting "not here" and "he's dead"  and "wrong number" as responses so they're going to be a little cynical even when you're telling the truth.

[Selby]

No doubt they hear those excuses all the time, it's just annoying that I'm sitting in my house alone and they are seriously asking me to check my house to see if he's really there or not.  It's ridiculous.  I am to the point where if the number isn't recognized by my phone, I flat out don't answer it.

[MuffinMan]

Get Google Voice, click block caller and they get a "this number is no longer in service" recording. It's wonderful, they'll stop calling within a day or two.

[Arthur_Parker]

Collections people are used to getting "not here" and "he's dead"  and "wrong number" as responses so they're going to be a little cynical even when you're telling the truth.

I wonder how popular faking a bad phone line is.

[Bzalthek]

So my mother has been diagnosed with Vertigo due to a deep inner ear infection, which is scary as fuck when you don't know what's wrong (Extreme dizziness, nausea, vomiting, pains in the head).

But I thought I'd share a humorous bit

Mother: I'm still a little dizzy, but it seems fine when I'm laying down.
Me: That's why they call it Vertigo and not Horizontigo.

I'm such an asshole, but they say humor is the best medicine and it was good to see her laugh.

[Lantyssa]

It does suck.  Hope she gets better quickly.

[Merusk]

Collections people are used to getting "not here" and "he's dead"  and "wrong number" as responses so they're going to be a little cynical even when you're telling the truth.

I wonder how popular faking a bad phone line is.

You internet detective, you. 

I'll go with, "pretty damn common," which is what makes Min's task so much more amusing from this end.

[RhyssaFireheart]

So my mother has been diagnosed with Vertigo due to a deep inner ear infection, which is scary as fuck when you don't know what's wrong (Extreme dizziness, nausea, vomiting, pains in the head).

But I thought I'd share a humorous bit

Mother: I'm still a little dizzy, but it seems fine when I'm laying down.
Me: That's why they call it Vertigo and not Horizontigo.

I'm such an asshole, but they say humor is the best medicine and it was good to see her laugh.

Heh, that's a good quip!  Hope she gets better soon.

[Bunk]

Here's some random depressing news. My roommate, whom I've known since highschool some 25 years ago, went in to the hospital about 10 days ago with Pancreatitis. No gall stones, no cancer as far as I've heard so far, so they have no idea what brought it on. The "good news" so far, was that he opened his eyes and looked at his girlfriend two days ago. Current prognosis is recovery, but potentialy could be in the hospital for months.

Just to add to the misery, and to make me look like an asshole - I told him about two weeks before this happened that I had to put my condo on the market. I still have to sell it, so odds are, he's going to be homeless by the time he recovers.

[Paelos]

If you can sell a condo in this market in 3 months, I'd get over it real fast.

[schild]

Bunk is in Canada. Given the republican party, I'm sure lots of folks will be looking to move there.

[Khaldun]

How many times do I have to tell the collection agency that calls my landline that there's no Carlos here, I don't know any Carlos, stop fucking calling me before I get big money?

I just told them he died and it was quite tragic (bleeding from the mouth and rectum, looked terminal) and that they would need a seance to contact him and get their money.

My annoyance is when they call and ask if I'm sure and maybe if I could look around the house I'd find him.  Like I'm going to go open the closet door and find some dude living there who I've never seen before...

Right now I've got Kaiser Permanente calling me every few weeks to let me know someone whose name I can't pronounce has an appointment down in Los Angeles.  It's a computer, so I have no retribution against them or way to make them change.  The one time I did get a live person, they were profusely apologetic and said they would change it (after asking me 4 times if I was sure Aryan Moreno didn't live with me and if she was a friend of mine or not) yet here we are a year on and I still get the phone calls.

The dude who had our phone number before (at least 10 years ago) clearly owes an asston of money to multiple people still. When they call our number and ask for him, they always act as if: a) I am him and I'm just lying or b) he's standing right next to me saying 'I'm not here'. The calls have fallen off a bit in the last four years or so, but it still annoys the hell out of me when some wrong-number asshole tries to give me the fifth degree when he's the one wasting MY time.

[MisterNoisy]

Wouldn't the easy fix for these collections calls be just to drop your land line, or are they calling your cells with this nonsense?

[RhyssaFireheart]

Possibly, but some folks do have a vague use for their landlines, so dropping it isn't always an option.

The calls I hate are the ones asking for one of my brothers (I've gotten them for 2 of my bros over the years).  I'm not privy to all the inside details of their finances, but look, I'm not going to give the callers info about my bros nor am I going to put up with being called about their issues.  For a short while there, we were getting calls for my youngest brother 2-3 times a week for over a month.  I haven't been associated with my maiden name in over 18 years, HTH did they even get my number to call?

[Mrbloodworth]

Your brothers, likely.

[Lantyssa]

Skip tracing.

The amount of info on you out there is staggering.  If that's not good enough to find someone, it's probably enough to find their family members.

[Minvaren]

Might do well to start a "collection questions" thread if this keeps up.

Collection agencies cannot call you on a cell phone unless you have given them approval to do so, and they are supposed to scrub any phone numbers against a cell phone database prior to putting it on a dialer.  You get one "oops" if you call them on a cell phone by accident, after that they can get fined.  My understanding is that it's the same for telemarketers, unless you have an existing business relationship with them (your credit card company, mortgage company, etc.).

Needless to say, as the FCC is predicting the end of the land line in about 6 more years, this has telemarketers and collection agencies running scared.

I haven't been associated with my maiden name in over 18 years, HTH did they even get my number to call?

Ever co-signed for one of them on a loan?  Shared an address?  Talk to each other on Facebook publicly?  I once had a skip-tracer pull up a family history and full residence/employment history on a friend from high school just by giving them their name and one prior address.  You wouldn't believe the amount of data that the free sites have, let alone pay sites like Lexis-Nexis.

[Sky]

The dumb kid who I bought this house from still hasn't updated his mailing address, nor has his ex-girlfriend who precipitated the sale when she dumped him. Regularly get bank stuff and a couple weeks ago a DMV, seemed like his license. I normally don't see it (the mailman knows the situation), so I thought the kid had finally changed his address at the PO. We recently got a new mailman, and sure enough lots of mail for those two retards shows up.

[Miasma]

I bought my condo from a  couple, he was a lawyer and she was a university professor.  You would think a couple like that would be smart enough to go down to a post office, pay a few bucks and have all their mail forwarded to their new home wouldn't you?  Or to change their address info in a timely manner?  No.  For a good six months I was getting all sorts of important mail that I had to stick in the return to sender box.  Banking info, investment statements, government notices, professional associations all of it.

I still get two copies of the fucking L.L Bean catalogue every season.  Two.

[Salamok]

Wouldn't the easy fix for these collections calls be just to drop your land line, or are they calling your cells with this nonsense?

They call cell phones, on the bright side after my cell phone # somehow got added to some mega marketing list for foreign telemarketers I discovered the Mr. Number app.  Considering how awesome this app is and how you can't really get android apps on your land line I would rather all these turds try to call my cell.

Mr. Number is sort of a blacklist based spam blocker for phone calls.  It even removes the call from my call log (places it in a blocked calls log inside the app).

[Merusk]

The dude who had our phone number before (at least 10 years ago) clearly owes an asston of money to multiple people still. When they call our number and ask for him, they always act as if: a) I am him and I'm just lying or b) he's standing right next to me saying 'I'm not here'. The calls have fallen off a bit in the last four years or so, but it still annoys the hell out of me when some wrong-number asshole tries to give me the fifth degree when he's the one wasting MY time.

It's either the last number out there for the guy - as Min is indicating - or he's still using it, as BW is implying.

I got similar calls 2 jobs ago for two years for a guy who'd been fired 2 years prior to me being hired.  I'd always tell them he hadn't worked there in x years and offer to forward them to HR for verification.  I'd get a stunned "Oh" and once the woman on the line mentioned they'd just gotten my number from him a few months prior. 

Almost as good as when you get random calls from college-aged guys asking for women who obviously just gave a random set of numbers.  Those I've learned to say "dude, she wasn't interested," to before hanging up.

[Hammond]

The house I am living in was a rental for 10 years before I bought it.  I still get mail for the 3 of the previous renters and it has been almost 6 years since I bought it.  I get collection letters, medical information, All kinds of personal stuff which I just send back.  It never stops.  I am just waiting for a collection agent to physically show up one of these days looking for them.  One of the renters owe somewhere in the 6 digits to some pretty nasty collection agency's. 

[bhodi]

I have to confess, I deliberately did NOT forward my mail to my new address. I updated my address for all the places I care about.

So long, 10 years of accumulated junk mail mailing list crap.

Apologies to my new house's owners, but from what I hear it gets marked return to sender at the PO now anyway.

[Selby]

Collection agencies cannot call you on a cell phone unless you have given them approval to do so, and they are supposed to scrub any phone numbers against a cell phone database prior to putting it on a dialer.  You get one "oops" if you call them on a cell phone by accident, after that they can get fined.

You know, you say this, yet I still get telemarketers and collection agencies calling me for some dude who had my cell phone number +8 years ago.  I told them it's not me, this is a cell phone, etc. and they really don't give a shit.  Like I said, I just stopped answering my phone anymore unless I know who it is and if they didn't leave a message, it obviously wasn't important.  I have gotten several agencies leaving me voicemails asking to call them back at some number, but I'm not wasting my time to have them argue that I'm lying about being Jim Bob or hiding him in a closet.

[Cheddar]

Needless to say, as the FCC is predicting the end of the land line in about 6 more years, this has telemarketers and collection agencies running scared.

Your article is quoted from Avaya.

[Abagadro]

If you want to see what collection agencies can and can't do under federal law you can reference the Fair Debt Collections Practice Act (pdf).

Each state also usually has its own statute, but they are mostly consistent with that one and since these agencies are often calling interstate it is the FDCPA that governs.

[Draegan]

Yay bootmgr is missing.  Assuming hd failure.  External Dvd drive cable is missing.  Good night.  Fuck you world.

[Minvaren]

Needless to say, as the FCC is predicting the end of the land line in about 6 more years, this has telemarketers and collection agencies running scared.

Your article is quoted from Avaya.

I picked that one as it had discussion on the contents of the FCC's report, which was linked at the end of the article:

So when is the existing PSTN network going away? According to this group, sometime before the next decade.
You can read the report yourself here: http://transition.fcc.gov/oet/tac/TACJune2011mtgfullpresentation.pdf

[JWIV]

Collection agencies cannot call you on a cell phone unless you have given them approval to do so, and they are supposed to scrub any phone numbers against a cell phone database prior to putting it on a dialer.  You get one "oops" if you call them on a cell phone by accident, after that they can get fined.

You know, you say this, yet I still get telemarketers and collection agencies calling me for some dude who had my cell phone number +8 years ago.  I told them it's not me, this is a cell phone, etc. and they really don't give a shit.  Like I said, I just stopped answering my phone anymore unless I know who it is and if they didn't leave a message, it obviously wasn't important.  I have gotten several agencies leaving me voicemails asking to call them back at some number, but I'm not wasting my time to have them argue that I'm lying about being Jim Bob or hiding him in a closet.

It's one of the things I love about my Ooma box - it's got a community blacklist, as well as a few other block features.   

[Salamok]

If you want to see what collection agencies can and can't do under federal law you can reference the Fair Debt Collections Practice Act (pdf).

Each state also usually has its own statute, but they are mostly consistent with that one and since these agencies are often calling interstate it is the FDCPA that governs.

This becomes harder to police as things go global, not so easy when your junk debt buyer is in Argentina and the call center is some contractor in India.

[Minvaren]

When someone tells you repeatedly, "this is a really good deal" and "I believe that this is more than a fair deal," does anyone else instantly distrust that person?  Or have I just bought too many cars in my lifetime?

[rattran]

Run and get your machete. It totally is more than a fair deal. Just not for you, obviously.

[Hammond]

I immediately distrust a salesperson that says that.   95% of the time I translate "this is a really good deal" to "this is a really good deal for the seller because he is going to make a ton of money off me"

[Nebu]

I immediately distrust a salesperson that says that.   95% of the time I translate "this is a really good deal" to "this is a really good deal for the seller because he is going to make a ton of money off me"

My immediate view of any salesman comes from the movie "The Outlaw Josey Wales".  A snake oil salesman is trying to sell a bottle of his tonic to an aging native American.  The native American looks at the man and says "if it does all of that, you drink it!".