Third party collection agencies resort to illegal and unethical debt collection practices with the belief that you do not know your rights under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA). The FDCPA was established by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 1978 in response to hundreds of complaints against these debt collectors. The FDCPA ensures fair debt collection practices and has stipulated rights for debtors.

The FTC releases a list of consumer complaints every year and for the last 11 years Identity Theft and Debt Collection complaints have topped the list accounting to 30% of the total complaints.

The NCO Financial Systems is a formidable collection agency that has many complaints to its credit. The NCO purchases old debts from people like your cell phone provider, hospitals and the government for a pittance and tries to collect on them. These bills are very old and in all probability you may have paid for them already or may need not pay any longer. These are trivial points though because you do not have an obligation to pay any of these old debts to any debt collection agency, rekindled to life, least of all to the NCO. Consumers are harassed by NCO's debt collectors for debts which are not theirs but for debts of relatives, neighbors or co-workers and so on.  

Debt collection agencies like the NCO employ people and train them to collect on debts. These collectors are paid paltry sums as salaries based on their collections. Hence they resort to all possible tactics to collect on a debt. If the agency collects on a debt the creditors may be given a share of the collection depending on what basis they sold that particular debt to the agency.

In 2004,the NCO was penalized with 1.5 million dollars fine by the FTC for reporting inaccurate information to the credit bureaus. One of the major violations of the FDCPA is reporting wrong information to the credit bureaus. Despite a regular array of complaints about it, the NCO Financial Systems continues to violate the FDCPA.

The FTC through the FDCPA regulates the debt collection industry. As consumers you need to know what the debt collectors can and cannot do. The FDCPA has laid down laws to regulate debt collection. In the above case NCO has violated the FDCPA and was made to pay the penalty. As consumers you must verify every detail of debt collectors' calls and letters and put an end to harassment by supporting your case from the FDCPA.