Handle the CC Phone Calls on your terms

[XiliX]

Here are a few things I have learned when you need to have the CC companies not call you at all hours of the day and night.

The key to this is getting a voice-mail account from one of the free providers. (Google "free voice mail") If you are about to fall behind on payments, update your contact info with the CC's with this new number. If you can do it on their web site, all the better. Change your work number to this new voice mail number as well.

Always keep this number handy - when you speak to the CC's for the first time regarding a late payment, they will want to "update/confirm your contact information". Here's you chance to provide that new voice mail number.

And just as important: If you call the CC's back on their toll-free number (800/888/877/866 area codes), the CC's will have the number you are calling from. It doesn't matter if you have caller-id blocking enabled or not. For toll-free numbers, the number you are calling from is always sent.
They will keep a record of this and use the number you are calling from as a way to reach you in the future.

Some of the free voice mail services above allow you to place calls thru the service so that the voice mail service shows up on the caller ID and not your real number.

Lastly, if you simply don't call them back, they will "dig deeper" to find other numbers to contact you at. You want to convince the CC's that they have a valid number to reach you at. You can call them back and simply say that you cannot afford to pay anything this month (but make no promises as to when you can in the future.).

The phone calls are inevitable, but hopefully the above will let you handle the calls on your terms.

Good luck to all!

- Xilix

[treehugger1]

Google Voice is great! As mentioned, you can call your google voice number from your own phone and choose an option where you have GV make the call.

The other cool thing is that you can (you decide) allow calls coming into google voice to be patched through to your home phone or cell phone. Everyone else is stuck with only GV.

I have slowly been converting every account over to my goggle voice phone number. When all of this is completed, I'll then finally change over to prepaid cell phones. All my telephone business will be conducted indirectly through google voice.

Sometimes I think users of GV know more about the features than those who created GV. LOL. I've learned most of the capabilities of GV by reading the discussion forums dedicated to GV. Absolutely Amazing what folks have figured out!