Creditor Harassment in Texas
As a citizen of the state of Texas, one of the many protections you are afforded is freedom from creditor harassment.
At the federal level, you have the Federal Debt Collection Practices Act (commonly referred to as the FDCPA), which provides protection when creditors violate federal debt collection laws. In the state of Texas we also have the Texas Debt Collection Act (commonly referred to as the TDCA) which further protects Texans from unscrupulous debt collection activity. The entire TDCA can be found under Chapter 392 of the Texas Finance Code and you can see there are a multitude of debt collection methods that are currently prohibited.
Most citizens simply do not know the protections and rights that they are afforded under these two acts.
Chad Johnson Managing Partner
Generally, if you have an unpaid debt the phone calls and letters are going to come. Your phone will ring all hours of the day between 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Creditors will continue calling you over and over to the point that they will fill up your voicemail. It’s just a fact of life when you have unpaid debt, and your creditor has every legal right to attempt to collect on their debt.
A common misconception is that creditors are not allowed to call your place of work. Unfortunately, this is not true and they actually are allowed to call your place of employment, so long as they are only trying to locate you. Luckily, you can stop debt collectors in their tracks by hiring an attorney... that is one of the benefits of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) and the Texas Debt Collection Act (TDCA) mentioned above.
Most protections that you have revolve around debt collectors or creditors engaging in some sort of fraudulent activity to try to collect the debt. We have seen a number of fraudulent practices perpetrated by collection agencies:
- Eliciting some sort of payment from the debtor by promising a settlement when they had no intention of doing so
- Threatening to put a debtor in jail for not paying a debt (very common in the payday loan industry)
- Telling a debtor that their account is about to be frozen if they do not pay within the next five days
- Hinting at the loss of child custody or welfare benefits
You can avoid all of these fraudulent and harassing situations simply by hiring our firm to represent you. Once we take over, all communication with the collection agency MUST go through us. Your creditor is no longer allowed any contact with you directly. Furthermore, we can review previous contact you've had with your creditor and look for violations of the FDCPA or TDCA. If you have a valid claim, you are entitled to damages, attorney fees, plus an additional $1000 per violation. Most importantly, however, we can work with you to either permanently settle the debt or devise a debt relief strategy to relieve you of the debt altogether. If you are being harassed by a creditor, contact us today and get immediate help with your case.
The information contained in this web page is for general information and educational purposes and is not legal advice. Reading these posts does not create an attorney / client relationship with the law firm of Johnson & Bryan.