Debt Collection Agencies Gone Wild!
No, they're not getting naked in public, but what they are doing is wasting a lot of people's time.
For the dozenth time in the last two days, I got yet another call from a cell phone number in a Minnesota area code. I always answer my phone by saying, "This is [myfirstname]." Like all of these calls, the person on the other end of the autodialed, spoofed-number call says, "Is "Jennifer" there?" For the dozenth time in two days, I replied, "There is no "Jennifer" at this number," then hung up and blocked the number on my cell phone.
And that's just the last two days. Here's the funny thing: I have had my cell phone number for over 12 years. I got those same calls when I had a flip phone back when the number was assigned to me. I've tried telling the callers that information, but they just hang up, so I've stopped trying.
Early on, I looked up the person they were calling. She did, indeed, have my number at some point. I found that by searching Google using her name and my number. I know her last name, since one of the callers said it early on. I've had hundreds and hundreds of such calls. Over the years, I've pieced together bits of information about "Jennifer." I know addresses where she has lived. I know that she is in default on a student loan from long ago. I know the name of the "business college" she went to. It went out of business half a dozen years ago. I don't know if she's alive or dead, since hers is not an uncommon last name, but "Jennifer" long ago had the cell phone number I have had for a dozen years.
These collection agencies have purchased a database list of old debts that have gone unpaid. They plug those lists into their computers and let the computer autodial the phone numbers, after spoofing a number in the area code where the person's last address in their database lived. If someone answers, a person comes on the phone and asks for "Jennifer."
If you ask who is calling, or what company they represent, they hang up instantly. So, I have no idea what collection agency is calling me right now. Sometimes, weeks go by with no calls for "Jennifer," but they soon start coming in again, with multiple calls from different spoofed numbers coming each day.
This makes no sense, actually. After 12 years, there is absolutely no chance that they will collect on that debt. The list is so old that buying it is very cheap, but someone has to be sitting there to speak if someone answers those calls. "There is no person named "Jennifer" at this number." I sometimes say that, but normally, I just hang up and block the spoofed number.
How is such a stupid thing an industry? "Jennifer" was a young person when she defaulted on her student loan. Probably, her last name has changed by now, through marriage or something. Maybe she's dead. But, she lives on through stupid debt collection calls to my phone. Sometimes I get texts for her, as well, all threating dire consequences if she doesn't pay up right away. I block those numbers, too, but there is an unlimited supply of spoofed numbers out there. I've tried calling those spoofed numbers a few times. Apparently they spoof numbers that are not assigned to any phone. "Your call cannot be completed as dialed..."
What a shitty job it must be to be picking up the phone when someone answers a number that once belonged to "Jennifer" or the tens of thousands of other people who no longer have that old number they're calling. The actual success rate of those calls must approach zero, I'd think. Calling a 12-year-old cell phone number again and again is the essence of uselessness.
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