Debt Collection: Know Your Rights
Under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), debt collectors are not permitted to:
- Call you before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m.
- Contact you at work if you’ve told them verbally or in writing that your employer doesn’t allow you to get such calls in the workplace
- Contact a third party about you for any reason other than getting your contact information; simply put, they may not tell anyone that you owe money
- Harass or abuse you or anyone else they contact about you
- Lie about the amount you owe
- Use deceptive methods to collect a debt from you. For example, they may not:
- Falsely claim to be law enforcement officers
- Claim that you’ll be arrested if you don’t pay your debt
- Threaten to seize, garnish, attach, or sell your property or your wages — unless they are permitted by law to do it and intend to do so
- Give false credit information about you to anyone, including a credit reporting company
- Use a fake company name
