When you have financial debt, whether it’s significant or not, you face enough tough choices and stress in your life. As you try to focus on your career and build up the financial resources to pay your debts off, you are constantly looking over your shoulder waiting for debt collectors to appear. With all this stress, you don’t need to deal with the added burden of abusive, threatening, or otherwise harassing behavior from debt collectors.
The Target of Harassing Behavior
Are you the target of harassing behavior? There are a number of tactics that debt collectors use to coerce people into paying off their debts is staggering, and at times downright frightening. The preferred tactic of many collectors is to simply continue calling your phone until you can no longer deal with the constant ringing and answer. This tactic is illegal under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA). Under the guidelines of the federal law, you may not receive phone calls before 8am or after 9pm. Additionally, when you tell them to stop calling, they must abide by that request of face penalties.
Debt harassment, as mentioned, comes in a variety of forms. Even if you speak to a debt collector only once on the phone, that is plenty of opportunity for them to use aggressive or deceitful tactics to get you to pay your debts. The following behavior is forbidden under the FDCPA:
- Misrepresentation: Failing to identify themselves, blatantly lying about who they are, or exaggerating your debts during a call
- Misinformation: Lying about who they are calling on behalf of
- Contacting other parties: Collectors may not contact your family, friends, neighbors, or co-workers regarding your debt status
- Public shaming: The Internet has given some collectors the idea to post information about your debt status in public forums
- Threats: Collectors cannot have you arrested or garnish your wages
- Abusive language: Threatening language, abusive language, curse words, and other aggressive verbal behavior is not allowed.
Contacting a New York Debt Harassment Lawyer
If you identify with any of the abusive behavior mentioned above, it is time to contact an expert. While it is possible to deal with debt collectors and credit bureaus on your own, the FDCPA is a complex legal code that does allow collectors a measure of recourse in the event they believe you have exaggerated their tactics.
With the no-cost assistance of a New York debt harassment lawyer, you can put an end to all debt harassment and get back to focusing on your life. Legal experts are well versed in the guidelines of the FDCPA, know all the steps collectors might take to continue their behavior, and can effectively manage your case to help put a stop to the harassment.
Choosing a New York Debt Harassment Lawyer
Each member of the Fair Debt Lawyers legal team is licensed to practice in the state of New York, and our lawyers know the FDCPA like the back of their hand. They’ll stand up as a representative for your rights in the face of abusive debt collectors. Best of all, our no-cost service will send the bill to your creditors, not you. You have enough to worry about without paying legal fees. We’ll handle you case from start to finish so you don’t have the added stress of harassing debt collection hanging over your head any longer.