Collection Agency AutoDiallers in Canada
I had a chat with Harvey who is a contact over at Saskatchewan Consumer Protection. I called to ask about a post regarding Canadian collection agencies being able to sue debtors.
He mentioned that one of the big complaints that they're getting calls for are autodiallers from canadian collection agencies.
- Another canadian collection agency autodialler thread
I didn't really get the big picture with collection agency autodiallers until he described the problem:
A big (or small) creditor hires a collection company to collect for them.
The creditor hands the collection agency a disk with several thousand delinquent accounts including their contact information.
The Canadian collection agency loads the debtors' contact information into their computer and schedule the autodialler software program to dial all of the delinquent accounts with an automated message.
When the phone rings the person gets a message to the effect of:
"You've got an urgent matter to deal with: Please contact the following number right away to resolve the issue."
THE PROBLEM WITH AUTODIALLERS IS INACCURATE CONTACT INFO
Harvey mentioned that in most cases the phone numbers are properly dialling the debtors residences. He mentioned that in a small percentage the autodiallers are dialling the wrong number, in a nice automated fashion.
The autodialler doesn't really know if it's calling a wrong number. It just knows to call the number and record if it connected properly, if the number is out of service, if it gets a voice mail or answering machine etc. It doesn't know if it's calling Mr Brown, when it should be calling Mr Black.
Let's assume that the collection agent gets a disk with 10,000 delinquent names and phone numbers of debtors to call. Let's also assume that 1% of these phone numbers are incorrect. That's 100 people that are going to receive a bogus phone call from a collection agency!!
WHAT TO DO IF YOU GET A CALL FROM AN AUTODIALLER?
Generally the autodialler message won't say who the company is that's calling. They are supposed to leave a return phone number on the message and also on the caller ID.
The return phone number should always be TOLL FREE by law.
Harvey mentioned that if you get one of these autodialled calls, you should do the following:
I had a chat with Harvey who is a contact over at Saskatchewan Consumer Protection. I called to ask about a post regarding Canadian collection agencies being able to sue debtors.
He mentioned that one of the big complaints that they're getting calls for are autodiallers from canadian collection agencies.
- Another canadian collection agency autodialler thread
I didn't really get the big picture with collection agency autodiallers until he described the problem:
A big (or small) creditor hires a collection company to collect for them.
The creditor hands the collection agency a disk with several thousand delinquent accounts including their contact information.
The Canadian collection agency loads the debtors' contact information into their computer and schedule the autodialler software program to dial all of the delinquent accounts with an automated message.
When the phone rings the person gets a message to the effect of:
"You've got an urgent matter to deal with: Please contact the following number right away to resolve the issue."
THE PROBLEM WITH AUTODIALLERS IS INACCURATE CONTACT INFO
Harvey mentioned that in most cases the phone numbers are properly dialling the debtors residences. He mentioned that in a small percentage the autodiallers are dialling the wrong number, in a nice automated fashion.
The autodialler doesn't really know if it's calling a wrong number. It just knows to call the number and record if it connected properly, if the number is out of service, if it gets a voice mail or answering machine etc. It doesn't know if it's calling Mr Brown, when it should be calling Mr Black.
Let's assume that the collection agent gets a disk with 10,000 delinquent names and phone numbers of debtors to call. Let's also assume that 1% of these phone numbers are incorrect. That's 100 people that are going to receive a bogus phone call from a collection agency!!
WHAT TO DO IF YOU GET A CALL FROM AN AUTODIALLER?
Generally the autodialler message won't say who the company is that's calling. They are supposed to leave a return phone number on the message and also on the caller ID.
The return phone number should always be TOLL FREE by law.
Harvey mentioned that if you get one of these autodialled calls, you should do the following:
- Record the phone number and the time of the call.
- Call the phone number and ask who the company is that is calling.
- If you don't recognize the call, or the purpose of the call, request that the company removes your number from their calling list.
- If the company doesn't remove your phone number from their calling list, contact the phone company to ask for help (It's a CRTC - Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission issue at that point) Also call your local Consumer Protection office to file a complaint.
You can imagine that if these 100 people all called Consumer Protection and properly complained about that autodialler problem, the issue would be quickly resolved. The Collection Agency would have a great deal of paper work to do to prove that all of the complaints were resolved in a timely and efficient manner.!!
I thought I should take a moment to write about collection agencies using Autodiallers in Canada as it's a much bigger problem than I realized.
