ARS - Associate Recovery Systems ripoff They verbally harrsed me and repeatably called me back serveral time in a row Felt threatened Jacksonville Florida

From my humble opinion, due to the poor reputations that collections have and the obvious and routine violations of the laws, I am appalled collection agencies aren't beaten down on a regular basis by privacy advocates such as EPIC. I hesitate to put a third party collector in the same category as my mortgage banker .....

What consumers need to do is start their letters to the collection agencies with SHOW ME YOUR PRIVACY STATEMENT and then call to our government to audit every nook and cranny of these third party collectors. THEN SHUT THEM DOWN FOR VIOLATIONS - DON'T SANCTION THEM WITH A PIDDLY FINE WHICH THEY WILL MAKE UP ON THE SORRY SAP WHO DOESN'T KNOW.

true, GLBA, may not help in the Op. case but

GLBA: regulates financial institutons which are defind as "businesses significanty" engaged in providing financial product and or services, Exp: are banks, credit card firms, insurance companies, lenders,accountants, financial planner, ect

Debt collector must comply with GLBA.

I admit this is a complex law, one has to consider, if these collection agency, selling these false debt back-n-forward, wouldn't it violate or at least the spirit of the law.

Sorry for getting away on what the op was asking.

Because the GLB Act requires financial institutions to protect the privacy of their customers, including customers' nonpublic, personal information. The OP voluntarily provided his privately held / sensitive information to the caller. He might want to push the privacy issue by requesting in writing their consumer privacy statement (which they probably don't have and the collector probably has never heard of the GLB) ...

The Gramm-Leach Bliley Act

The Financial Modernization Act of 1999, also known as the "Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act" or GLB Act, includes provisions to protect consumers' personal financial information held by financial institutions. There are three principal parts to the privacy requirements: the Financial Privacy Rule, Safeguards Rule and pretexting provisions.

The GLB Act gives authority to eight federal agencies and the states to administer and enforce the Financial Privacy Rule and the Safeguards Rule. These two regulations apply to "financial institutions," which include not only banks, securities firms, and insurance companies, but also companies providing many other types of financial products and services to consumers.

Among these services are lending, brokering or servicing any type of consumer loan, transferring or safeguarding money, preparing individual tax returns, providing financial advice or credit counseling, providing residential real estate settlement services, collecting consumer debts and an array of other activities. Such non-traditional "financial institutions" are regulated by the FTC.

I'm all for giving back to collection agency, what they dish out.

But, if you file a false police report, you will be arrested. and upon conviction, not only will you now have a criminal record, fines, you might have to pay to cover the cost of the investigation. and if your false report, causes someone to get arreated, you will also be held liable in civil court when this person sues you.

I investigated crimes in Florida for many years.

The most common I.D. theif, is communications services fruad, that when a person gets a utility service or phone service in your name.

I agree with Steve that this company is trying to get information for this bill, I wouldn't be surprised if several people are paying on the same bill. in other states.

Under federal law there is the GRAMM-LEACH BLILEY ACT. don't know what, if any would apply, in your case but you should look at it.
try looking first within the FTC. web site

Adam,

NEVER speak to any debt collector on the phone, and NEVER give a debt collector ANY information.

Go to FTc.gov, and file reports online for each violation of your rights under the FDCPA which you can also read at that site.

Next time they call, sharply blow a police whistle in their ear and hang up.

They are not identity theives. They are working for JUNK DEBT BUYERS and are trying to collect on a debt that they have no information on. This is an amateur skip tracing attempt.

File a police report for stalking. Tell the police you are getting threatening calls from someone who says they are watching you at your house. This will at least get them arrested and charged with a felony. That will keep them busy for awhile.

contact all three credit bureau's and place a fraud watch on your credit file, what this does for a certain amount of time, it will take additonal information, to release you credit info
or if someone is trying to obtain credit, there are safe guards.

i don't know what you can afford, but all three credit bureau's offer a service for around 10.00 a month, just choose one, or all. this service will let you know when there are changes to you credit file or when someone requests your file.

call you local police dept. and explain what happen and if you can get a police report, in case something happens down the road, they might tell you no, but an information report, take all of 10 mins.

trying to prove this later or in court, will be impossible without some documentation of some sort.

another way to show you try to have this done is write to the state attorney general in both states and the ftc, no matter what they reply, you have proof that you attempted to take care of this. just because nothing been done to your credit now, doesn't mean you sit and wait for it to happen, create a paper trial