How do I stop debt collectors from harassing me?

Well, there's a couple ways to stop debt collectors from harassing you. One, you can send a cease and desist letter. That will cause them to stop calling you or writing you but they may refer the debt out to another debt collector who may, in fact, start again. We have found that one particularly valuable way is if they're calling you on a cellphone under the TCPA, which is the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, if you revoke consent to call, simply tell them not to call you any longer, write down who you talk with and when that was. If they keep calling you, it's actually $500 to $1,500 per call and we use that as one of our settlement tools.

With creditors, we're able to negotiate the debt quite a bit down if we have a claim like that. It's important not to really just block the calls but go ahead and tell them not to call and then continue to track those calls if you want to use that as a tool of settlement.