Will playing sick work for awhile?

[gonebroke4no]

Thank you BigJohn, and NewPage. I appreciate the additional input.

BigJohn, that is very interesting from your experience of telling them "he will not be back till after 6:00 PM.", and that is stopping the calls. I wonder why? Out of curiosity, is this for one or a few collectors calling you? If you are keeping track with caller ID, does this stop all of the collectors from calling you?

[BigJohn]

It stops each collector individually. They don't pas the info to others.

If they should want to discuss the matter any further with them I will probably tell them what kind of a jerk I am and then see if they will tell me why they are calling.

[gonebroke4no]

Thanks BigJohn : - )

[papie]

Collection agencies, especially the big ones, run on a dialer system. The calls are automated and automatically dialed every so many hours or days.....UNLESS one of the collectors puts in a different code to prompt the dialer to do something different.

When I worked in collections and we were notified that someone was in the hospital, the account would be put on hold for 7 days, after that the calls would start back up.

So, the fact is that -yes, it could buy you some time with some collections companies, but not by a whole lot. After so many reports of someone being ill it would likely be forwarded to another department to investigate the matter (usually depending on how large the account was...)

[gonebroke4no]

Thank you Papie, I appreciate the additional input.

[brokeinnj201]

When I feel like having some fun with "Jessie Owen" or "Shawn White" from India, I pretend that I cannot hear them - I keep saying hello hello as they ask for me or go throught their script. Sometimes bang the phone against the counter to see if I can "fix" it

[GoingDown]

Collection agencies, especially the big ones, run on a dialer system. The calls are automated and automatically dialed every so many hours or days.....UNLESS one of the collectors puts in a different code to prompt the dialer to do something different.

When I worked in collections and we were notified that someone was in the hospital, the account would be put on hold for 7 days, after that the calls would start back up.

So, the fact is that -yes, it could buy you some time with some collections companies, but not by a whole lot. After so many reports of someone being ill it would likely be forwarded to another department to investigate the matter (usually depending on how large the account was...)

I think a lot depends on the particular collection agency.

One particularly rude and aggressive collection agency was after my Aunt, and even after she ended up living in a nursing home, they called her at the nursing home! What did they expect to come of that? She was slowly dying. She obviously no longer cared about paying off old debts at that point. The nursing home told them to stop calling, but they kept calling, until she died. Then when they heard that she was dead, they finally stopped calling the nursing home.