unwanted phone calls
Aug. 18th, 2006 01:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
indigo_rose99This is a rare week "off" for me. To relax, do laundry, commune with my cat, remind myself of how much I hate Texas summers, catch up on the million pieces of paperwork that build up in our lives...
I am still suffering from jet lag, which means that no matter what time I go to bed, I wake up sometime around 3am, and cannot get back to sleep until it is almost morning. I'm spending most days in a fog, doing my best to keep regular sleeping hours in an effort to get back to a regular schedule.
So this morning, I was woken promptly at 8am by a phone call on my home landline. I ran out of the bedroom and grabbed the wireless handset -- what if it was work, and I had to get to a computer during the call? -- and... it was a computer. Automated call. At 8am. I waited for a human to tell them what I thought. It was a financial company, trying to collect on an unpaid debt on a person with a similar name to mine. Not me.
I am now getting these phone calls about once a week. Mostly they leave uninformative messages on the answering machine.
This time, I very, very politely asked that the human, after verifying that I am not the person they are searching for, pass on the information that it is illegal to call a person in their home before 9am. She insisted that it is perfectly legal between 8am and 9am. I took down her name and her company's name, and hung up. And then I went on the Internet.
She was right. According to the FCC, they have a legal right to call me anytime between 8am and 9pm.
Who exactly thought that 8am is a reasonable time to call me? Or after 8pm? I disagree. But short of cutting off my phone service, I feel that I have limited options to prevent it. Yes, I am on the Do Not Call list. That did cut down on the frequency of solicitors, but obviously is not slowing down these guys.
Since I am now getting these "you owe us money! Oh, wait... Not exactly you." phone calls so frequently, at what point am I legally allowed to declare that I am being unduly harassed?
Update: There is actually a website on how to stop harassing contacts from debt collectors, but they are primarily for people who actually do owe the debts (which I do not) and for people who are continuously being contacted for the same debt (I think it is a different debt with each phone call). What about a collection agency that has decided to attach my phone number to every debtor that has a name vaguely like mine?
I am still suffering from jet lag, which means that no matter what time I go to bed, I wake up sometime around 3am, and cannot get back to sleep until it is almost morning. I'm spending most days in a fog, doing my best to keep regular sleeping hours in an effort to get back to a regular schedule.
So this morning, I was woken promptly at 8am by a phone call on my home landline. I ran out of the bedroom and grabbed the wireless handset -- what if it was work, and I had to get to a computer during the call? -- and... it was a computer. Automated call. At 8am. I waited for a human to tell them what I thought. It was a financial company, trying to collect on an unpaid debt on a person with a similar name to mine. Not me.
I am now getting these phone calls about once a week. Mostly they leave uninformative messages on the answering machine.
This time, I very, very politely asked that the human, after verifying that I am not the person they are searching for, pass on the information that it is illegal to call a person in their home before 9am. She insisted that it is perfectly legal between 8am and 9am. I took down her name and her company's name, and hung up. And then I went on the Internet.
She was right. According to the FCC, they have a legal right to call me anytime between 8am and 9pm.
Who exactly thought that 8am is a reasonable time to call me? Or after 8pm? I disagree. But short of cutting off my phone service, I feel that I have limited options to prevent it. Yes, I am on the Do Not Call list. That did cut down on the frequency of solicitors, but obviously is not slowing down these guys.
Since I am now getting these "you owe us money! Oh, wait... Not exactly you." phone calls so frequently, at what point am I legally allowed to declare that I am being unduly harassed?
Update: There is actually a website on how to stop harassing contacts from debt collectors, but they are primarily for people who actually do owe the debts (which I do not) and for people who are continuously being contacted for the same debt (I think it is a different debt with each phone call). What about a collection agency that has decided to attach my phone number to every debtor that has a name vaguely like mine?
