How to deal with shady places that turn the heat up on you.

Again, this is all Tossed_Salad_Man's writing, not my own.  Credit is due with him, not I

Watch your credit reports closely. Junk Debt Buyers will really TRY to fuck your shit up, and you need to be willing to fuck them right back. I make it a point to fuck back three times as hard as they try to fuck me.

As for what I know. All you need to do is read and study. The law is in your favor, you need to know when your rights have been violated, document it fastidiously, then confront the violator about it.

One of the main reasons I feel so strongly about this is the tactics collectors use to collect debts. They prey on people, using their ignorance of the laws and profit off that.

Also paying a collection agency is worthless. Paying them or not paying them has the same end result. That debt went into collections, and is a black mark. Oh, collectors will argue that, but pay or no pay, it is bad either way. Unless you can get a pay for delete(PFD), where you pay them, and they delete their trade line in your credit report, but that is pretty much NEVER an option.

If it's under 2000, you can send them a cease and desist letter which states don't contact me about this ever again unless it is to inform me of a suit against me.

"SHUT UP OR PUT UP". Which after that letter further collection attempts are violations. Generally though, relatively low dollar debts are not worth their time, especially on a hard target. Collectors want easy kills.

OOOPS, this guy knows his rights, lets move on.

Again all my experience is dealing with sub 8000 dollar debts. Usually over 5000 is the magical sue number, but if you are difficult enough, and the collector racks up enough violations, you reach a point where you won't get sued, and can possibly get a check just to have you not file suit. ie collector racking up around 45 violations over two weeks trying to collect.

I'm no longer in this boat. I walked away scot free and a little over 18 months later my credit is in pretty decent shape.

I didn't believe it could be done, I had time on my hands so I did what I did. Just to see if it could be done.

If everyone understood how debt, and debt collections actually works, the system would get severely shaken up. I don't go around preaching this stuff, but when it does come up I try to point people in the right direction.

The system as a whole is fucked up. Credit reporting is another pet peeve of mine. The fact that the agencies themselves PROCLAIM that 70% of their records have some sort of mistake in them is fucking goddamn ludicrous. They tout this high percentage of errors to SELL YOU one of their products to monitor the information they keep on you.

"we don't know what the fuck we have about you, but we are pretty sure it's wrong and this incorrect information impacts your life HEAVILY. lol."

cocksuckers.

The fact that I have to watch my credit report like a fucking hawk, because it isn't up to the credit reporting agency to verify the shit they are sent, it's up to the entity entering the information to validate it is just wrong. ANYONE with a "membership" can send information to the CRA and BAM you have a trade line in your report.

Is it actually yours?

WHO CARES!? Not them.

Also the fact that a member can make an entry, with no questions asked, takes seconds, but to dispute actual erroneous entries in nearly impossible and takes months.

This is why once you figure out FDCPA, you need to move on to FCRA, because the credit reporting agencies are not your friends either.