Compliance in the Outbound Collections Contact Center

Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA)

The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) became law on March 20, 1978.  While the intent of the legislation was to dissuade the use of misleading or harassing collection practices by the creditor, section 805 (Communication in Connection with Debt Collection) outlines specific guidelines for calling. In short, debt collectors are prohibited from communicating with a consumer:

"...at any unusual time or place or a time or place known or which should be known to be inconvenient to the consumer. In the absence of knowledge of circumstances to the contrary, a debt collector shall assume that the convenient time for communicating with a consumer is after 8 o'clock antemeridian and before 9 o'clock postmeridian, local time at the consumer's location."

In general, creating zone sets for the hours of 8am-9pm complies with the FDCPA. Be aware, however, that the Federal guidelines do not supersede individual State guidelines, if the State laws stipulate more restrictive calling hours.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is currently urging modifications of the FDCPA, to update the legislation to include guidelines regarding mobile phones and text collection practices.

There have been multiple instances of litigation that cite the FDCPA regarding the use of false/hidden ANI (caller ID information) and questionable frequency of calls (complaints of harassment.) Make sure to check the most recent iteration of the Federal laws, and local statutes for your entire customer base to ensure Dialer is configured in compliance with all laws.

State Legislation Resources

As mentioned in the DNC module, there are often occasions where merely understanding Federal guidelines for outbound dialing is not sufficient. Many States have enacted legislation that further restricts creditor contact.

Similar to DNC lists, collections legislation is seldom static. To keep Dialer use in compliance, it is incumbent upon your organization to remain cognizant of modifications and additions to current regulations, and to likewise keep the Dialer configuration in compliance with local, State and Federal laws.

The following pages contain the URL for each US State's collection legislative code. Please verify, especially with those sites that are not maintained by the government, that the content is the most recent, prior to making any operational/configuration changes in Interaction Dialer Manager.