written by Harvey Rephen |  

In today’s atmosphere of financial distress and economic uncertainty, there is a new type of threat to consumers – a type debt collection vampirism – where almost anything goes to drain the last drop of financial wealth from consumers who are unable to pay their bills. This collective mentality, so pervasive in a majority of the debt collection industry, poses a severe threat to any attempt to recover from financial devastation. However the Congress in a rare moment of clarity created the FDCPA (the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act).

The FDCPA protects the consumers rights by limiting the who, what, where, when and how of debt collection. The primary power of the FDCPA is that it gives you the consumer a private cause of action to sue any debt collector violating your rights, and granting up to a $1,000 penalty to you the consumer, plus the debt collector has to pay your attorneys fees. Essentially making it a fairly easy, free and effective method of protection from and punishment of abusive debt collectors.

The two most common violations of the FDCPA are the failure of debt collector’s to identify themselves as a debt collector, that they are attempting to collect a debt, and that any information would be used for that purpose. In every conversation this warning is necessary. Further, even if this disclosure is stated the second most common violation is that it is left on an answering machine and someone other than the consumer it is intended for hears the message (a very common circumstance). This is called third party disclosure. So almost any message left on an answering machine today is potentially a violation of your rights.

There is a little known fact that the FDCPA can be used as an offensive weapon in helping consumers eliminate debt and clean up their credit reports. Often when a debt is legitimate and there has been annotation of such a debt on a credit report, it is almost impossible to have it removed. However, pay careful attention to this next statement. If your rights have been violated instead of or along with the $1,000 penalty, the settlement can include the removal and cleaning up of those items from your credit report. Further, instead of the $1,000, you can negotiate to have the original debt dissolved. Thereby eliminating the debt and cleaning up the credit report at the same time.

It is extremely important that all physical evidence be saved such as messages left on your answerin...