I’m working at home today, and the phone just rang with a Portland, OR number, 541-956-8822. I answered.
Me: “Hello?”
Random caller: “Hello, is this, uh, Ms. Bennett?”
Me: “Yes”
RC: “I’m terribly sorry to bother you, but I’ve been trying to get in touch with (name withheld) who lives out on Trowbridge St. Is she one of your neighbors?”
Me: “We haven’t lived here long, so I don’t know who that is.”
Which is true. I’ve never heard of this person.
RC: “I’m sorry, I’m just down here in Texas”– huh? I thought the number said Portland? –”and I’ve been trying to get in touch with her.”
Me: “Sorry, I can’t help you. I really don’t know who she is.”
After a few more questions about my neighbor, whom I really don’t know, she thanked me for my time and said have a nice day.
Now, I’m a suspicious sort. I know about nasty tactics utilized by collection agencies to find people, and my radar really went up given the discrepancy between where the number was apparently originated and where the caller said she was. A quick Google search for the phone number turned up a few facts and some interesting stories: this is a debt collection service, they use disingenuous tactics to find people, and what they do is totally legal. From the FCC website:
If you have an attorney, the debt collector must contact the attorney, rather than you. If you do not have an attorney, a collector may contact other people, but only to find out where you live, what your phone number is, and where you work. [emphasis mine] Collectors usually are prohibited from contacting such third parties more than once. In most cases, the collector may not tell anyone other than you and your attorney that you owe money.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about our financial system, in part because of some great books Beacon has out (The Missing Class, co-author Victor Tan Chen recently posted something on BB) and on the horizon (Not Keeping Up With Our Parents by Nan Mooney in May, and a terrifying book about student loan debt in the fall). Our reliance on debt provides us with many things we couldn’t otherwise have–fun stuff like vacations and major electronics, but also education, health care, and other necessities. It’s as if because we have access to all this credit–which companies willingly give out because it’s such good business, especially when people screw up and have to pay late charges and accelerated interest rates–prices for the big stuff continue to rise. Why not raise tuition at your college? Students will continue to pay, they’ll just have to borrow more to do so. Of course it’s all tied in to health care, the cost of which keeps skyrocketing.
But back to the phone call… It struck me as very strange, and symbolic of the societal illness of systemic debt, that someone’s job is to call people and make up random stories in order to find out information about someone. What an odd way to make a living–lying to strangers. At least it’s more legitimate than out and out fraud.
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