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Debt collectors are harassing foreclosure victims. This is the complaint of many. Sometimes they take extreme measures.
At times the phone will not stop ringing said a couple. They had refinanced their house but CitiFinancial persisted in demanding $20,000 on their first mortgage. Bill and Georgianne Crabill kept on protesting but to no avail. Finally they were threatened with impending foreclosure. Bill explained, “We couldn’t do anything. They wouldn’t listen to us. It was like they backed us into a corner we couldn’t get out.”
The story of the Crabills is very common. The debt collectors have no respect for time – they call at all odd hours and make life miserable. Threats and harassment cross all lines of decency.
William Howard is an attorney who hones in when debt collectors break the law. Debt collectors of credit cards leave behind abusive notes to terrorize people. Morgan & Morgan is a law firm in Florida that has sued hundreds of debt collectors taking up the cause of the consumers. As per the law these collectors have no right to be pushing or abusive. They are not permitted to resort to tactics that are meant to frighten or embarrass people so as to force them to make payments. Some debt collectors are women who do not hesitate to leave behind notes with a racial slur and bad language.
For those facing abuse from debt collectors the best way is to keep a recording of the message, log the name, phone particulars like number and times and respond only in writing to certified mail. One can demand that they stop bothering while the person is in his or her place of work.
The Crabills suffered this abusive and provocative nonsense for many years. Sometimes the tension was unbearable. The one point that gave them strength and fortitude was that they knew that they were not in debt. This made them seek court protection. After being counter sued the bank admitted to their wrongdoing, calculated and cleared up the mess. But if they had not gone to court their house would have been foreclosed and they would have been evicted.
A news channel tried to communicate with many local debt collectors but none would come before the camera. They cryptically replied that being professionals they always stuck to the rules. Some of them said that the borrower should work out deals instead of avoiding the debt collectors.
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One Response
My wife and I are the ones in the story, Citifinancial tried to steal $20,526.55 from us after we refinanced our mortgage with them. They wouldn’t discuss with us what the money was, even after we told them we had a statement saying we had a $0 balance on the old mortgage. When the threats got to where they said they would take legal action we were forced to hire an attorney. He wrote letters asking them to review our records because they had made a mistake, it did no good a few months later we received foreclosure papers, in fact our son and daughter even got a couple copies. When we countersuied they finally found their mistake and dropped the foreclosure. We didn’t drop the countersuit because at that point we had been put thru hell by those crooks as well as being out money they stole from us, attorney fees, etc. The case went to the Supreme Court in Albany NY and was dismissed when our attorney was two days late with an expert witness affidavit along with an explination of why it was late. I think the judge was just waiting for one small slip up on our part to get rid of our case. When it went to the Court of Appeals they also dismissed it saying what was done to us wasn’t “intentional infliction of emotional distress”. I don’t know who is worse Citifinancial or the New York State Court system.