Make Credit Vultures Prove You Owe

In my last column I wrote about my Kafkaesque experience with a collection agency that was trying to shake me down for money I didn't owe. That didn't make me particularly happy, so I want to make life as hard as possible for these debt collectors.

I want to make them fight tooth and nail for every penny they pry out of their victims. I'm happy to help anyone who's being harassed by a collection agency, not out of the kindness of my heart, but because I now have a deep and abiding hatred for debt collectors.

In my last column I gave you some advice about what to do if a collector tries to intimidate you into paying a debt that isn't yours, but what if you believe you actually owe them money?

Rule No. 1 in our quest to give collection agencies the middle finger: Find out if you owe anything. Let's make these vultures do some work for us. There's a strategy called debt validation. This is also pretty complicated, and you'll learn more about it from this Web site than you will from me.

Basically, you demand that the collector provide you with documentation proving that you actually owe them money. If they can't come up with the right paperwork, you don't pay them a dime. And they have to stop calling and mailing you. It's the law, and in this situation they'll actually have to obey it.