It’s Sunday afternoon and you just received a phone call from a debt collector.  So you ask yourself, are collection agencies allowed to call me on the weekends?  Is this considered a violation of the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act? Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but unfortunately it’s not.    Often times we receive calls from clients wanting to know when collection agencies are allowed to contact them.  Under the FDCPA, collection agencies are permitted to contact clients between the hours of 8am and 9pm, seven days a week, even if it’s a holiday.  If you receive a phone call from a debt collector BEFORE 8am or AFTER 9pm in your time zone, this would constitute as a violation.  However, in order for us to allege this violation against the collection agency that contacted you, we would need the exact date and time of the call (right down to the very minute they called).  Without this specific information, we wouldn’t have a strong enough claim against the collection agency.    If you have caller ID and a camera at your disposable, I would suggest taking a picture of your caller ID as evidence of the call you received before 8am or after 9pm.  If photographing your Caller ID is not feasible, then just simply keeping a log and writing down the date, the accurate time and name of the agency is sufficient enough.  If you answer the phone call and the collection agency starts to get aggressive and make legal threats or use abusive language towards you, it’s important to take notes about this call as well.  As mentioned previously throughout our website and in the other blogs, documenting collection calls is essential and we strongly encourage it.

-Megan F.