I came home last afternoon and found I had a voicemail message. At first, I was excited and hopeful that maybe it was my piano teacher calling to say, "Okay, I'm teaching this fall. When do you want your lessons scheduled?"
But no, it was some collections firm again. Looking for the son of the former owner of my house:
"This call is for Stephen Cox. If you are not Stephen Cox, hang up now...."
(And on earlier ones I listened all through to, they essentially imply that by listening to the whole message, you are asserting you are the person they seek, and that you are responsible for the debt).
This is one of those modern-life things that just should not be. Innocent people - people who pay all their bills off on time every month - should not have to field calls for some stranger who doesn't.
I don't know why they call me. The phone number that is linked to the address is NOT the phone number when the person in question lived here - this phone number has always been MY number; it was mine when I lived in the apartment and it moved with me. The phone number to my house was different when the previous owner lived there. (And FWIW, I have no idea if Stephen Cox ever lived here; his mother did, but I don't know if he ever lived with her in this house).
Obviously this dude is quite the deadbeat, because off and on I've been getting calls seeking him - starting about five years back, then ending for a while, and now starting up about once a year and keeping going for a few weeks to a few months. It's annoying.
I've tried calling the number some of the messages left and explaining, but that cuts no ice. Obviously they think I'm lying for him. (Good heavens. If I knew where the guy was, I'd drive there myself, kidnap him, and drive him to the office of the collections firm, and leave him hogtied on their front porch. That is how done I am with dealing with these calls)
I figured out yesterday the reason these calls bug me:
1. I feel like the people there are judging me; they think I'm a liar or a cheat
2. I somehow have a vague fear I'll come home and find a collections officer waiting for me at my door, and I'll have to try to explain how I am not shielding their deadbeat.
And I realized yesterday, both of those are kind of unreasonable:
1. Why should I care what a collections firm (if it is the rhymes-with-Bot-Flowery Law firm that has called in the past, they're crooks) thinks of me. I pay all my bills on time. My credit score is clean. Why should I care what people who are skirting the law (or just on the other side of it) think? They probably assume everyone's a deadbeat and a crook. Or that they can intimidate or harass people into sending them money.
2. They won't do that. And if they did, I could drive over to the police station, explain to the officers that there was an uninvited guest on my front porch, and, considering that there's not a lot of other crime going on (and a few officers know me, from church and stuff), they'd drive over there and turf the creep. But as I said, it won't happen.
In other words: Stephen Cox's being a deadbeat is not my responsibility, and I need to stop acting like it somehow is. That's what rhymes-with-Bot-Flowery Law Firm wants me to do.
If I had more energy, and could remember how to change my outgoing voicemail message, I'd change it to "You have reached (myphonenumber). If you are calling on behalf of Stephen Cox's debt, hang up now. There is no Stephen Cox here, nor do I have contact information for him....." and then, I don't know? Can you threaten to charge someone for wasting your time?
I will say: if I ever hear from Stephen Cox again, he's getting a piece of my mind. I'm freaking sick of fielding these calls.
3 comments:
I've been getting similar calls. They say the call is for someone who has a first name which starts with my initial and we share the same last name. I just hang up on them. We do have the "No Call" list here in Missouri and if I wanted to, I could report them but ... meh ... I can't be bothered. Hanging up is easier.
some of those calls are just b'c the # is associated with the address. other times they are actual phishing class. (I had one at work for a coworker who had left. he threatened to take me to jail for answering the phone. I looked up the number and they were a scam, but I felt my heart hammering in my chest all the same.) I hate how we as a society have allowed this to effect people like us who are uninterested parties to the whole thing. I am glad you reached those excellent conclusions. And maybe you can block that number from your phone?
I read an article a while back that many collections companies actually buy debts that have already been written off, therefore the person who owed the debt is no longer legally required to pay it. And sometimes they even try to collect debts that have already been paid. Therefore, Stephen Cox might be a deadbeat or he might not be.
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