[JoeAltmaier]

And it only gets to court after harassment hasn't worked. Anecdata: guy I know had a common name. Debt collector fastened on him because he'd lived in the same town as a deadbeat with that name too. Guy would call day and night demanding payment.

[Spooky23]

We were on the receiving end of that when the debtor in question registered our phone number when she signed up for a CVS card. It took awhile to figure it out, but every time we picked up something there, we would get increasingly crazy calls from debt collectors and insurance subrogation people.

It got worse over time as the collection agencies sell bad debts at a discount, and the bottom feeders when the debt is close to aging out are awful.

[elliekelly]

Is it necessary to call someone with debt a “deadbeat”? Often the people who are being hounded by debt collectors are victims of predatory lending and a system designed to punish them with fees for being poor.

[dlhavema]

The name/title doesn't always apply, true. But sometimes it really does.

Most blanket statements have flaws in them...

[oh_sigh]

At least in America, you can demand that all correspondence goes through certified mail, with big fines if they don't.

[pmiller2]

Not precisely "certified mail," but just "mail." They can choose to use certified mail if they want, but it's not required. You should always use certified mail to communicate with a debt collector, no matter if the debt is legitimate or not.

[briffle]

I have done that twice for family members, along with asking for proof of the debt, and that they are authorized to collect it. Both times, never, ever heard from the collector again.

[milesvp]

My understanding with debt collectors, is that they usually purchase a spreadsheet with very limited data, and there is almost never a paper trail for said debt. Which also means debt has a habit of showing up on multiple spreadsheets that keep getting resold. I think planet money did a podcast on this topic.

Patio11 also wrote about talking to debt collectors with regards to identity theft. https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-r...

[rmilk]

This seems to the the correct understanding. See these two articles that give the view from people who tracked down the debt collections and the bad data in those spreadsheets.

Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-12-06/millions-...

NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/15/magazine/bad-...