Okay, it’s no secret that I have debt because I write about it all the time and I talk to people I know about it. Therefore we can skip the explanations and go strait to the meat of the story I have to relay this morning.

At our house, we get an inordinate number of calls from both collection agencies and salespeople — ironic, don’t you think? As a result, we screen our phone calls. Out of state numbers are automatically silenced. Numbers that appear as 000-000-0000 or 999-999-9999 are also routed to voice mail, as are Unknown and Unavailable. All of our friends and family are coded into our phone book so we can recognize them calling right away. Everyone else has the option to leave a message.

If the call is truly important, we are confident that they will find a way to contact us. Or, they can simply leave a clear and concise message. With friends and family we don’t have the problem of ambiguous voice mails, yet for some reason with the other calls we do. The expectations of those who leave these messages are unclear to me, because I truly feel that nobody in their right mind would respond to one of them. Here is an example.

“…Jackson. Please call me about an important matter. My number is 800-555-5555.”

First of all, there is no indicator whatsoever as to who the call may be for. Is it for me? Is it for my wife? Is it for the last guy to have our phone number? Stranger things have happened. Just the other day I got mail for a member of the Clampit family (though it wasn’t Jed).

In addition to the ridiculous ambiguity of the caller’s message, it was very clear that the message was a prerecorded, automated call. This is why the beginning of the message, which likely identifies who the call is from and who the call is for, is chopped out and the message begins in mid stream.

The bottom line is that these people, or these organizations will not receive a call back from me. If they expect me to believe that there is some urgent or important matter then they can do me the honor of using my name and listing a reason for their call. The automated call is offensive enough as it is, but when I can’t even hear the full message because your automation is unable to handle something as common as voice mail, I lose all interest in your call. Period.

If I called one of them back and left a message that started with my last name and ended with only part of my phone number, as often happens with these messages, it would be construed as a malicious act and legal action would be taken to procure my debt and perhaps even my confinement. Yet these companies get away with it and expect us simply to adapt. We somehow owe them the duty of returning their call because they happened to have our phone number. To me, this is an obnoxious thought.

Just last year we were getting calls from a collector, a large bank whose name rhymes with Lace Manhattan, and they were getting aggressively more frequent and angry. They would call in excess of ten times a day on our cell phone which I was fairly certain isn’t even legal. They would leave long, dramatic messages on our voice mail, replete with threats and guilt trips. I became angry with the company and decided to exercise my own rights a bit. I began placing calls to their office in Denver and leaving my own messages.

“Hello, this is John Doe calling on behalf of the American Public. I’d like to speak with you about an important matter, namely the bilking of millions upon millions of dollars from the hardworking citizens of this country by the corrupt American banking system. When you get this please remember that it is in your best interest to call me immediately so that I can scream at you and call you an idiot.”

After leaving nine or ten messages, I got a call directly from some gentleman who apparently felt he had some kind of authority over me. I’m guessing he was a manager or department head of some kind within the company in question. He kept asking me questions about who I was and what I thought I was doing. I kept asking him why he worked for a company that steals money from people. The call quickly devolved into a screaming match between him and I. He was without a doubt the most ridiculous little monkey I have ever had the misfortune of interacting with. It left me with a feeling similar to that of realizing that you’ve just stuck your hand into a fresh, hot mound of dung.

Then I got a call from his local Sheriff asking me to stop the phone calls. The company had claimed that I became violent and made threats, but what the idiots forgot was that they record every call in and out of their building! I instructed the officer to review the tapes before accusing me of anything and he asked me just not to make any more phone calls. I asked him to reciprocate with respect to them calling our phone twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. His response set my hunch in concrete, the police in our nation work for big business.

“Mr. Kolenc, I can’t make them stop calling you because you owe them money. I can however assure you that if you continue making phone calls to them they will press charges against you for harassment and possibly more.”

I asked him if I could press charges on them and of course he responded in the negative. Anyway, I have to prepare for another day at work. Also my wife is awake and says she had a bad dream so I’m must go and console her. Collectors, heed my words, leave behind the subterfuge or prepare never to hear from me.

JMK