Hey guys,
I've got a situation here.
My girlfriend got a phone call from a place called
Publishers Business Services. It's one of those telemarketing scams that push magazine subscriptions over the phone.
They told her that she could get free subscriptions to 7 different magazines. All she had to do was to pay the postage. It would come to $19.95/mo. Well, see jumped at that.
She never received a single magazine for a few months. That's when the phone calls started. We started getting these aggressive collectors calling up to 3 times/day looking for almost $100 for magazines that she never received. She told them that we were moving (to the place we live now) and to just cancel the subscriptions and not to call her again.
That didn't stop them. We continue to be harassed by them. She did receive 1 issue of Rolling Stone and some other magazine recently, but that was it.
Years ago, I worked for a collection agency. I only was there for a month or two (what a lame job!), but I completed their training program. In training, they made us read a piece of law called the
Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. In this, it is detailed the laws that apply to collectors attempting to collect a debt.
These asswipes violated a number of different sections of this act. First off, a collector is not allowed to contact you more than 1 time per day pertaining to the same debt. These guys, were calling up to 3 times/day. They were giving her grief at her place of employment as well. She got written up for being on the phone so much with these people and it played a role in her dismissal from there.
Another violation was when she told them verbally that she did not want to be called again about this, they did not cease the phone calls. She talked to 3 different people about this. You'll sometime see ads in the paper, or in the phonebook, with a lawyer saying that he can 'stop collectors cold in their tracks'. All that needs to be done, is to contact the collectors and tell them (verbally or in writing) that they do not want to receive any more phone calls from them - and they can not legally call you after that has been done.
I'm going to call a lawyer, but I wanted to get some feedback from the peanut gallery before doing so.
