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Companies seeking to get paid are getting more and more aggressive despite laws designed to prevent creditor harassment. Our last post discusses this growing concern. Here are a few other articles the News-Sentinel has run recently that illustrate just how bad it’s getting. If you need protection from creditors, call us today. We can help.

Debt Collectors Rack up Complaints

Lewis, from the Baltimore suburb of Dundalk, Md., has been dealing with debt collectors since her fiance lost his job last year, causing her to fall behind on $8,000 of credit card debt. She said the collectors are continuing to call her after she told them to stop, inappropriately contacting her friends and threatening to take her house.

“It’s like a ton of bricks on your chest,” said Lewis, 41. “You just stop answering your phone. Not because you’re a deadbeat. It’s just because you get no peace.”

Jerry Shields, of the Detroit suburb of Hazel Park, Mich., wants to know why collectors have tarred his credit report, claiming he failed to pay an $85 medical bill that he’s never seen.

“They have marching orders to hammer you for credit card information until you pay it,” said Shields, 66. “When they continually sandbag and won’t provide you documentation, you gradually realize, ‘You’re not going to get anywhere with them.’ “

Collection Firm Works to Keep Complaints Down

Despite the best wishes of Barrist, the world’s largest debt collection company generates thousands of consumer complaints about its practices each year and has paid settlements of $1.8 million to federal and state authorities.

But officials at NCO Group, based in the Philadelphia suburb of Horsham, Pa., insist that NCO takes pains to follow state and federal laws. Abuses by NCO collectors are the exception, not the rule, Barrist said.

Federal Law Prohibits Debt Collectors From Abuse

Aside from these protections, experts suggest several other steps you should take if contacted by a collector:

-Substantiate: When you are first contacted by debt-collection companies, immediately write a letter requesting that they substantiate the debt. The federal law gives consumers 30 days to ask collectors to verify the debt. According to J. Reilly Dolan, assistant director of the FTC’s Division of Financial Services, this will allow the consumer to know what information the debt collector has, and why the collector asserts the consumer owes the debt.

-Open your mail: Some consumers don’t know they’re being pursued by debt collectors because they don’t read their mail, says Rozanne Andersen, executive vice president of the debt-collection industry’s trade group, ACA International. Because of privacy rules, collection letters may not be visibly marked, so they look like junk mail, Andersen said. “With the amount of mail people receive today,” she said, “they are very likely to chuck the letter.”