Federal law gives you the right to demand a debt collector stop contacting you, full stop. We send the §1692c(c) letter that triggers it the day you engage us, and pursue statutory damages under §1692k when collectors break the rules anyway.
"I was getting calls during work, calls at 7am, calls to my mother's number. The cease letter went out the day I signed up. Two collectors stopped immediately. The third kept calling, and we sued them."
Debt collectors operate within rules under the FDCPA. They can't call before 8am or after 9pm in your time zone. They can't call at work after you've told them work calls are inconvenient. They can't talk to your family, your neighbors, or your coworkers about your debt. They can't threaten action they can't legally take. They can't claim to be government officials or attorneys when they aren't. They can't use abusive language or repeatedly call to harass.
Many collectors break these rules anyway. Most consumers don't know the rules exist. The collector counts on that.
Beyond the procedural rules, the FDCPA also gives you a single, powerful, immediate-effect tool: a written request to cease contact entirely.
The FDCPA's §1692c(c) lets you demand, in writing, that a debt collector stop contacting you. Once they receive the letter, they can only contact you again to confirm receipt of the notice or to inform you of a specific enforcement action they intend to take (like filing suit). Anything else is a violation.
We send that letter the day you engage us. Most collectors comply. The ones who don't expose themselves to §1692k damages: actual damages, statutory damages of up to $1,000 per action, plus attorneys' fees. We pursue those claims when the facts support them.
Where there's an underlying debt to validate, the cease letter goes out alongside a §1692g validation demand. The two work together: contact stops, and the question of whether the debt is even legitimate gets put on the record.
For most clients, that's the whole outcome: peace returned to a phone, a workplace, a family. The cease letter is enough.
For clients whose collectors continued calling after receiving the letter, or whose pre-cease conduct was already actionable (work calls, third-party disclosures, threats), the additional outcome is a damages claim under §1692k that often becomes a real financial recovery, plus a strong negotiating position on the underlying debt.
The cease letter is the first action; everything else flows from what the collector does next.
Document the calls, the times, the parties. Identify each collector by name and last contact date.
§1692c(c) cease-and-desist letter on the firm's letterhead, certified mail, formal notice on record.
Any contact after receipt of the letter is a violation. We help you log it as it comes in.
Actual damages, statutory damages, attorneys' fees. Pursued in federal or state court depending on the facts.
The FDCPA is the central tool for collector-harassment matters. Two related statutes come up when the harassment includes prerecorded or autodialer calls.
The whole framework: time-of-day rules (§1692c(a)(1)), third-party contact prohibition (§1692c(b)), cease right (§1692c(c)), validation right (§1692g), and damages (§1692k).
Read moreApplies to autodialed and prerecorded calls. Statutory damages of $500 to $1,500 per violating call, available alongside FDCPA claims when the collector used a robocaller.
Read moreNames changed, amounts approximate.
Eight to ten calls a day, two from the same number. The cease letter went out on a Friday. By the following Wednesday they'd stopped completely. That's the whole story.
They called my employer twice after the letter. We sued. The settlement covered the lost wages plus statutory damages and removed the trade line from my credit report.
They told my sister I was being investigated by the IRS, which wasn't true and wasn't allowed. We filed an FDCPA action with a TCPA add-on for the autodialer calls. The case settled within a few months.
Most people endure the calls because they don't realize there's a legal lever to stop them. There is.