ShareThisForty percent of Americans report that debt collectors have threatened them or their families with violence, otherwise harassed them or called at inappropriate times, according to a Scripps Howard survey.
A 1977 federal law, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, prohibits debt collectors from engaging in such actions.
As the recession wears on, cash-strapped families aren't only being pummeled by job losses and foreclosures. Debt collectors are becoming more aggressive, a three-month Scripps Howard investigation has found.
The survey reflects this.
More respondents than not said that letters and telephone calls by debt collectors are becoming more common. Forty-seven percent of respondents answered "yes" and 31 percent answered "no" to the question: "Does it seem that letters and telephone calls from debt-collection agencies are becoming more common than they used to be?"
In the survey of 1,001 American households, 32 percent of respondents said "yes" to the question: "Have you or your family ever received multiple calls from a debt-collection agency, so many that it seemed to you to be harassment?"
The national survey was conducted Sept. 27 to Oct. 21 by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University. It included funding from the Scripps Howard Foundation. The margin of error was 4 percentage points.
"I really don't like to get mad -- but I have really got to the place where if the man was out my door, I'd knock him off of my front porch," said Johnny Michael Burnette, 64, of Baker, La., a suburb of Baton Rouge. Burnette said debt collectors have been trying to get him to pay for an item his car dealership supposedly purchased a decade ago and which his company returned the next day. Since closing his business in 2006, collectors have been calling Burnette at home.
"I promise you, I'd fight," Burnette said. "They say things that just don't sit well with me."
Burnette isn't alone.
Half of American families say they have received debt-collection letters, and 48 percent have been called by collectors, the survey found.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission, an agency charged with protecting consumers from fraudulent or deceptive claims, is considering updating the 32-year old law.
Survey respondents said it is common for collectors to get their facts wrong. Thirty-nine percent said that collectors contacted them or their families for debts that they did not believe they actually owed. And 34 percent said that collectors asked them to pay an amount they believed was incorrect.
The questionable information is being fueled by the development of a $60 billion market for reselling old debt. In this market, original creditors like credit-card companies sell unpaid bills for pennies on the dollar to collectors. But correct information often gets lost or scrambled in the process, Scripps Howard has found.
Survey respondent Angela Mixon, 44, said she stopped making payments on a $5,800 credit-card bill a year and a half ago. She stopped paying after the credit-card company declined to lower her interest, which she says consumed 80 percent of her monthly payments. Now collectors want her to pay $10,000.
"It's just not fair," said Mixon, a single mother who lives in Rio Rancho, N.M., a suburb of Albuquerque. "My gosh, don't put all that interest on that, because it's just not fair."
She said debt collectors repeatedly called her at work -- even after she told them to stop -- and one called her an "idiot."
(E-mail Isaac Wolf at wolfi(at)shns.com)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)
With Debtcollection, Debt-Survey, Debt-NCO
