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Reader PJ sued a bunch of harassing debt collectors and won $5,000, and Google Voice made doing it really easy. Someone had put down his work cellphone number on their credit applications and ran up a bunch of debts and collectors started calling him multiple times per day. He told them he wasn’t the guy and asked them nicely to stop, but that only made it worse.

PJ writes:

In fact, the call frequency increased once they realized they had reached a live person. I called each of these companies multiple times, and though I was given assurances each time that my number would be taken off of their lists, the calls continued, morning, noon and night.

At my wits end, I decided the only way to have the harassing calls stop was to file suits against the collection companies. It’s very important to understand that it is against the law for a company to leave a pre-recorded message on your cell phone. Armed with this knowledge, I filed suit against several of the collection companies. I filed in small claims court so I did not need to hire an attorney, and the process was as simple as completing a paragraph on a complaint form. For evidence, I had over a hundred Google Voicemail transcripts showing the times the companies called and the text of the pre-recorded messages.

Mysteriously, the calls all stopped immediately on the same date the collection companies received the certified letters stating they were being sued. Then a new flurry of calls began pouring in. This time it was their attorneys.

The attorneys representing these out of state collection companies were all desperate to settle out of court. hey did not want to incur the expense of traveling for court or hiring a local law firm who wasn’t on retainer. They also understood they had no justifiable defense for the calls. To make a long story short, so far I have successfully sued 3 of these collection companies and settled for more than $5,000 out of court. All it cost me was $35 and 20 minutes per suit.

Making these companies pay is the only incentive for them to stop their illegal and harassing practices. If more consumers knew their rights and actually took a few minutes to stand up for them, it would become less profitable for these companies to conduct business the way they do now.

That’s awesome, PJ, and you’re totally right, filing in small claims court is a very easy way for consumers to fight back. Here’s how to do it.

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Just Use “Block Caller” In Google Voice To Beat Fraudulent Debt Collectors
Trick Fraudulent Debt Collectors With Google Voice

When I buy a cellphone, I am quoted a price for the accompanying plan. The price is essentially a lie, or at best an attempt at obscuring the real costs of the plan. If you get a $20.00 per month plan, you pay that, plus an additional system access fee, plus a 911 access fee, plus taxes. On a $20 per month plan, these costs nearly double the cost of the plan.

Isn’t this deception? Isn’t it misleading and underhanded? Why should I pay a fee to access a system that I’ve already paid to access in the form of a cell phone plan? The name doesn’t even make sense! I’ve already paid to access your shitty network! That’s what the plan is for! And to add insult to injury the cellphone companies may simply raise their system access fee at any time. If their profits aren’t quite where they feel they should be, boom, up goes the system access fee.

Frankly, I’d like to launch a class action lawsuit under consumer protection laws, if only to make sure that the full costs of each phone plan are actually named in the plan’s cost, including 911 access fees and whatever other fee cell phone companies want to foist on consumers.

On Sunday Kristin and Andrew came to church with us in his ridiculously loud Volkswagen, and Joel Main spoke about giving.

Can I go off an a tangent here? Okay.[1] First off, I hate sermons about giving. They generally come off as thinly-veiled muggings, the preacher suddenly morphing into a salesman who is desperately trying to flog the money out of your pockets. That said, Laura and I have just migrated to Freshwater Church in Mississauga after a short stint at The Bridge Church in Burlington. I say short stint because we moved too far away to be a part of the church, but also because the church folded, citing amongst several reasons a lack of money. This came as a shock to me and Laura, as no-one had really actually said anything about money; maybe we missed those weeks, but there was a lack of transparency about it that bothered me afterwards.

This is why, even though I don’t particularly like them, I think sermons about money and frank discussions about money are good for a church. Actually, good for most organisations. Just be clear that the money isn’t going to the pastor’s slush fund. Be honest. Show what you’ve done with the cash. And be sure that you remind people that God doesn’t just want your cash and coin, but he wants those things you just can’t give him: your time, for instance. Or your talents. Or your ridiculously oversized SUV.

[1] Yes, I’m taking the piss out of Joel. Hope he doesn’t mind.