How to Fight a Collection Agency
Collections agencies are infamous for harassment and intimidating practices that scare people into paying. The laws of debt collection favor the debtors, but usually the debtors are unaware of their rights. With just a little bit of knowledge, it's possible to fight a collection agency and stop the harassment.
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Instructions
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Know your rights. A collector is prohibited from contacting you at inconvenient times or places, like between 9 p.m. and 8 a.m. or at work. See the link to Fair Debt Collection practices in the Resources section below.
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Stop contact. Telling a collection agency over the phone to stop contacting you will not work, because there's no proof of the conversation. However, if you send a certified letter demanding they stop, that's another story. Stopping contact doesn't cancel a debt, but it does end harassing phone calls and mail other than notification that the collector is taking some legal action against you.
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Dispute the debt. The best thing to do to fight back against a collector is to deny the debt and request a copy of the instrument you signed creating the debt. Use a certified letter. The collector has 30 days after receipt to prove their right to collect, or else their efforts are halted in their tracks. It's a dirty little secret of debt collection that only the creditor that lent you money has a legal right to collect.
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Get a lawyer. Not only does hiring an attorney force a debt collector to focus all their communications on them, it also helps ensure that your rights and interests are fully protected.
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Tips & Warnings
Collectors only get paid if you pay them. In almost all cases, the lender would rather negotiate with you directly than go through a separate collections agency, and will probably settle for much less than your outstanding debt. If possible, try to negotiate a settlement with the lender directly prior to them writing you off as bad debt. If a credit card company or other debtor has written off your debt as bad debt, this will be on your credit report for just as long as a bankruptcy would. In this case, it's probably already too late to prevent the damage, so paying the collector or filing bankruptcy is of little help.
