If there’s one thing people with bad credit have to deal with, it’s definitely debt collection agencies. And let’s face it — they call a lot. They’ll call all day and all night if that’s what it takes. They can actually call quite a few times, especially if they don’t make actual contact with you (and just with your voicemail). They have computer systems that will do nothing but call everyone over and over again, whether you are actually liable for the debt or not. And since people as young as 18 are becoming debt collectors, you can’t just assume that the debt collector you speak to will necessarily have the training and understanding of the law that you do. So you might get some really aggressive debt collectors trying to tell you that if you don’t pay today, they’ll sue you.

You don’t have to put up with collection agency abuse. Yes, you are going to have to pay your debts, but you are a person and that means that you deserve respect. So you need to think about how to fight collection agency abuse.

First and foremost, you need to try to go with getting a limited contact order placed in. Some refer to this as a cease and desist, but you don’t want to cut off all contact. This will only make the collection agency feel like they have to sue you in order to get your attention again. What you want to actually do is limit contact to letters only. Collection agencies hate this because it means that you have a paper trail and they have a paper trail. Well, they always have a paper trail but you have to make sure that you have an even playing field.

When you write letters to the credit collection agency, you need to make sure that you have multiple copies. No, one copy isn’t enough. What if that one copy gets lost? You need to protect that copy like you would protect your own life, if not more so. It’s time to really make sure that you focus on the bigger picture here — don’t just let them bulldoze you.

You also don’t just want to lick a stamp and send it in — you want to pay for Certified Mail, with a return receipt requested. This will let you know exactly when they receive your correspondence. Since many deadlines are 30 days, you want to give them time starting when they actually receive your correspondence, not when you mail it. Transit times can definitely take a while. So it’s better to make sure that you can know accurately when they need to act.

We’ll cover the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the real law that you need to read. Since it’s lengthy, we’ll break it down for you. Stay tuned!