The James Dicks Blog

It’s time to take back your dignity from the bill collectors.  I live in central Florida and a month or so a tragic story unfolded, centered around a family also from central Florida.  I don’t know all the facts but it was apparently financial in nature.  The family recently filed bankruptcy and was about $85,000 in debt.  The father had lost his job, got another one and then lost that one as well.  The father snapped at some point and shot his wife and two teenage children before shooting himself.  It was heartbreaking to say the least.  But nothing is so bad to end it all.  Financial hard ship can be devastating, and starting over can be overwhelming, but you can still prevail with your faith and hard work.

Bankruptcy will allow you to take control of your finances again.  But the most important thing to do is take control of the creditors calling you.  If you have not taken a few moments you need to read the Fair Debt Collection Practice act. You can find it at http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/credit/cre27.pdf.

This will give you the ammunition you need to fight back against the creditors who will flat out ignore your rights and lie to you.

Here are a few things that you can do to take control of some of these “blood suckers.” I know that’s strong but what else can you say about some of these collectors. Okay here we go.

(1)  Have fun- you must turn the hardship and situation into something that simply has a little lighter side to it.  I know we have all seen the Seinfeld episode where the telemarketer called Jerry at dinner.  Jerry then said “can I get your home number and call you back?” Exactly, they don’t want to be called at home either much less during dinner.

(2) When the collector calls, put them on hold for a few hours, seriously if you just put the phone down no one else can call.  Try taking the call using a different accent; whatever gives you some joy. Tell the collector to hold for one moment, make some banging clicking noises and then come back on the line and say sorry about that I had to turn on my tape recorder, go ahead what were you saying?  I bet they change their tune. I am not saying that you need to do this to dodge your bill collectors; I am only saying to do this to simply take back your life and work out your debts on your time not theirs. 

(3) Actually, the best thing to do is call your bill collectors every Monday or whatever day works for you each week.  You can give them an update.  Call them before they call you, even if you can’t pay; the communication goes along way.

(4)  Next time they call you, put them on notice.  Tell them to never call you again, then when you hang up send them a “Cease and Desist” letter with certified return receipts, letting them know that you no longer want to be contacted by phone. Tell them you are utilizing the rights afforded you under the Fair Debt Collection Practice Act and that you want all communication as outlined in the act to be by U.S. mail.  Violation of this request can result in possible civil and criminal actions.

(5) Trap Call. This may be over kill but you can get a 30 day free trial by going to trapcall.com.  It cost $25 per month which is a little steep for personal use but the free trial may be all you need for 30 days.  For small business it is sure a great use of $25.  Here is what they do; you sign up then put in your cell phone number.  Trap call will then intercept all phone calls made to your cell phone, I think it has to be a cell phone but you can check.  Since many people today are using a cell phone for their home number I felt this was worthy of discussing.  Once you have set up the service you can manage your calls through the site.  Anyone that calls doesn’t experience anything different.  But it is completely different.  First, if anyone leaves you a message, trap call will transcribe it and send it you via text message which is a cool feature.  If a bill collector calls you that is annoying then you can go to your mange calls and place that number on the “black list” and the next time they call, if you don’t answer, they will get “the number you have dialed is no longer in service please check the number and try again.”  That’s right, it will announce an “out of order” message every time you allow a black list number go to your voice mail.  If someone calls and you press ignore on your phone they will get nothing.  They will actually think that their phone didn’t go through correctly.  You can press ignore every time and they will simply just loose the call.  You can also use the feature to record all your calls, anytime someone calls you, a record option is available.  If you ever have someone call you from a private number you can select ignore, and while the caller hears ringing, you will see the name of the caller.  Never talk to another bill collector again, giving you the ultimate piece of mind.

Remember, you do have rights.  Know your rights and don’t allow any bill collector to intimidate you or abuse your rights.  Stand up for your rights.

All my best,

James

JamesDicks General Bankruptcy, business, Cease and Desist, collectors, constitutional rights, credit, credit cards, crisis, debt, economy, expenses, Fair Debt Colelction Practice, financial responsibility, goals, james dicks, money, personal finance, scams

It’s time to be cautious, during these rough economic times, we are facing, an unemployment rate reaching double digits and people are putting themselves in harm’s way.  When times are tough people can get desperate, especially if they have lost their job and are out of work.  The Internet is allowing predators to prey on these unsuspecting people who are frantically searching for jobs.

The first thing that likely happens when someone loses a job is to hit the Internet and start looking for a new one.  In case you haven’t, just go to Google and search for job openings.  There are lots of them and surprisingly you would think that with all the jobs out there we wouldn’t have a unemployment crisis.  Well the problem lies in the fact the many of these “job postings” are  scams.

Most of the scams on the Internet will often look very official and convincing.  Major Fortune 500 companies are having their identities threatened too.  The thieves are using these companies’ names to make the jobs look official to induce you to send an application to them at their HR email address.  If the email address is not the same as the companies’ that’s an obvious RED FLAG.  Many of these thieves will use Yahoo, AOL, Gmail instead of a corporate email address; so if you see that watch out.  Accomplish your own due diligence.

Be very cautious about trying to find a job completely on line.  Make sure you ask the right questions. Many of these job scams are listed as part time work from home type jobs.  If the job has anything to do with writing checks, doing payroll or processing of any kind – that’s a RED FLAG.  Start asking hard questions, and by the way, don’t just take what the person on the other end of the line has to say as fact.  Do your own home work. 

First thing you want to do is check the IP address of anyone you are communication with on line.  There are lots of places to find out where an IP address comes from, you can try this one; http://www.johnru.com/active-whois/trace-email.html.  I don’t endorse it but it has some good information on how to locate the IP address of a computer from someone’s email header so that you can find out where the IP address originates.  Most of these scams come from Nigeria, so keep your eyes open and if it sounds too good to be true it just may.  Do your home work and never send anyone you don’t know, regardless of the circumstances, any money via wire or Western Union.  Once you send it – it’s gone.

Dateline NBC just did a great story called “Inside the Financial Fiascos,” a special on how to see through these scams.  If you missed it you can probably catch it online at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032600/ .  Just be careful, take your time.  Your new job will come but in the meantime don’t fall prey to these scam artists and make your bad situation even worse.

JamesDicks General business, goals, james dicks, job, nigeria, personal finance, scams