Business Blog
Debt collection company pays record-setting civil penalty
Incessant phone calls to consumers, often about accounts that weren't theirs.
Repeated autocalls to wrong numbers.
Illegal disclosures to other people that a consumer owes money.
Those are just some of the allegations in the FTC's recent settlement with West Asset Management, a debt collection company that employs more than 1,500 collectors in 13 states and one offshore location. According to the FTC's lawsuit filed in federal court in Atlanta, the company violated the FTC Act and the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) through those illegal tactics — and more. The FTC also charged that West Asset Management ignored consumers' written demands that the company stop calling them and in certain cases, withdrew funds from consumers' bank accounts or charged their credit cards without their consent.
No lightweight in the business, West Asset Management has collected on more than 24 million accounts on behalf of clients in the healthcare, telecommunications, consumer credit, and government service industries. The company's tactics led to thousands of complaints from consumers.
In addition to a $2.8 million civil penalty — the largest ever in an FTC debt collection case — the settlement with West Asset Management bans a host of prohibited acts, including calling consumers before 8 in the morning, after 9 at night, or at their workplace; harassing them with repeated phone calls; and illegally communicating to third parties that a consumer owes a debt.
If you're in the debt collection industry or have clients who are, you know that this settlement is the latest in a series of FTC enforcement actions to protect the rights of consumers in financial distress. The hefty civil penalty and far-reaching injunction serve as a reminder that now’s the time for a FDCPA compliance check-up.
It is your choice whether to submit a comment. If you do, you must create a user name, or we will not post your comment. The Federal Trade Commission Act authorizes this information collection for purposes of managing online comments. Comments and user names are part of the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) public records system, and user names also are part of the FTC’s computer user records system. We may routinely use these records as described in the FTC’s Privacy Act system notices. For more information on how the FTC handles information that we collect, please read our privacy policy.
The purpose of this blog and its comments section is to inform readers about Federal Trade Commission activity, and share information to help them avoid, report, and recover from fraud, scams, and bad business practices. Your thoughts, ideas, and concerns are welcome, and we encourage comments. But keep in mind, this is a moderated blog. We review all comments before they are posted, and we won’t post comments that don’t comply with our commenting policy. We expect commenters to treat each other and the blog writers with respect.
We don't edit comments to remove objectionable content, so please ensure that your comment contains none of the above. The comments posted on this blog become part of the public domain. To protect your privacy and the privacy of other people, please do not include personal information. Opinions in comments that appear in this blog belong to the individuals who expressed them. They do not belong to or represent views of the Federal Trade Commission.