You may not of recieved a letter yet depending on where you live, and the phone calls begin on an automated dialing system which just assums you'd recieved the letter notifying you that you have been placed in collections.
And agent will be much more generous and understanding the sooner you call in.... not to mention 3rd party debts are only kept in the office for 6 months so if you do wish to do a payment plan the sooner you call in the better as it gives you a longer time period to pay it off. For payment plans, depending on your agent, they may ask if you are able to do 6 months of post dated checks. if you cannot, I highly suggest you ask for the total amount, and state you will pay atleast 18% of the debt every month. No agent should have a problem with that.

You're honestly too young to not take care of your credit. My suggestion is to not make payments to a collection agency. Pay it off in full or make a settlement. By paying the agency monthly, it only starts up the date of last activity and damages your FICO score.

Source a loan from perhaps your parents or a lender to pay the agency off, then make payments to the new lender.

As for your question, an agency CANNOT say who they are, or why they are calling on a voice mail. Depending on the creditor, the agency can get major (edited for language) from the client for third party disclosure. Curious, do you still have a copy of the voicemail? PM me if you do ;)

Hello, I was just recently contacted by CRS for the first time and I have not recieved a letter from them they just called my house where I live with my parents (am 21) and actually said they were Contact Resource legal Services which my have been one of those purposeful slipups to get the word Legal in there to make it sound more threatening. anyway the message kept saying it was a very serious matter and they needed to contact me and gave a reference number and a phone to call 18006738085. I have a guess as to what this may be about but i havent actually called back to figure out which debt this is about. on a side note, are collectors allowed to leave messages on answering machines like that i mean if my parents heard it only a moron would not suspect it was a collections matter of some sort or that i was in some sort of trouble with them and i thought collections agencies arent allowed to do things that will embarras the debtor or make obvious the fact that i am being collected upon.

aside from all this what do i do if i actually want to resolve the debt and pay it off? can i make a deal with them to pay bit by bit until its paid off? do i request a letter from them saying that the amount has been paid once im done paying in exchange for my co-operation? i mean i would rather pay this debt off then have to avoid collectors all my life.