Thanks for your question. First of all, keep in mind that the FDCPA only applies to third party debt collectors, not to creditors. The Creditor is the company you borrowed the money from. The collection agency is the company the Creditor hires to collect the debt after the Creditor’s efforts to collect it have failed.

This Country requires employers to be responsible for whom they hire. If you went into a grocery store and the cashier elbowed you in the face while bagging groceries and broke your nose, you would probably be entitled to (and want to) sue the grocery store. If employers were not responsible for the conduct of their employees, there would be much less incentive for companies to regulate their employees conduct.

If an individual is under the control/supervision of its employer, most of the time the employer is on the hook for the employees actions. There are exceptions, however there is no need to cover them here.

The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act was passed to place additional burdens on the employers of collection agents. Often, “rogue” collectors bounce from agency to agency. An employer should conduct reasonable investigations into the employees it hires. As such, it makes sense that we make the collection agencies responsible for the conduct of its employees.

Arguably, if the agency was monitoring their employees properly, providing adequate training, and screening their employees before they were hired the FDCPA would never be violated. In the “real world” however, this is a much more difficult task than one would assume. Sure, there are some agencies out there that blatantly ignore the FDCPA; I find this to be more of an exception than the rule, however.

Jeffrey