Credit Card Debt Elimination and Dealing With Nasty Creditors
When dealing with your creditors, the easiest and often most effective action you can take is to simply ask the creditor to stop calling you. You may have to remind the caller that the firm has violated one or more of the provisions of the Fair Debt Collection Act, but the calls should cease. Should you be dealing with a collection agency and not your original creditor, you may also create and send your own cease and desist letter stop their debt collection harassment. Always send a cease and desist letter by certified mail, return receipt requested so you’ll have proof of its receipt. Also, make every attempt to send this letter to a physical address of the collection company, not to a P.O. Box. You can report harassment problems to your state Attorney General’s office, the Federal Trade Commission, the American Collectors Association or your local State Bar Association. Should problems persist, you have the right to sue a collector in either state or federal court within one year from the date of the violation. If you are successful you are eligible to recover money for damages, court and bankruptcy attorney costs plus an additional amount of up to $1000. If you have no way out to catch up you will probably have to file chapter 7. The beauty of this is, once you file chapter 7 bankruptcy, all of the calls will stop.
The Fair Debt Collection Act specifies the rights of both creditors and debtors. If you have been subjected to any of the actions noted, you are the victim of creditor harassment for the FDCA regulations. Collectors are prohibited from calling before 8 AM and after 9 PM or even constantly using the phone to harass you. Next, they can’t deposit a post dated check prematurely. Another very common complaint is that creditors cannot use profane language. Something else they have been known to do is give false information of any type concerning your account to someone else. Once you file for bankruptcy in the automatic stay is in place that creditors will be notified and they can’t even contact you at all. This is probably the largest benefit of filing personal bankruptcy besides credit card debt elimination.
