It’s one thing to be dealing with debt, quite another to be hounded by a debt collector – MRS Associates, in particular. The agency is known for tactics that are often aggressive, and questionable. But you don’t just have to take it, you can stand up for yourself. Here’s what to do if MRS Associates is calling you.
What Is MRS Associates?
Simply put, MRS Associates is a third-party, New Jersey-based debt collection agency that was founded in 1991. The kinds of debt it attempts to collect include retail, education, utilities, healthcare, telecommunications, and healthcare.
Who Are Its Clients?
The agency’s goal is to collect cash owed to their clients, which include banks but can be any entity that solicits their services. Sometimes they will purchase a debt account from a customer, the original lender.
What Is MRS Associates’ Reputation?
We would say that it’s good at what it does, except that it woefully and regularly pushes the envelope. In fact, the company’s mostly known for unattractive business practices that often render their targets irritated, befuddled, and sometimes quite ticked.
There are many complaints against MRS associates, mostly about the frequency of their collection calls. Some debtors have complained about the agency’s assertive approach and how they’ve been made to feel uneasy or even dissed.
Can’t The FDCPA Help?
It’s crafted to. The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, for example, dictates when a collector can and cannot call you. The fact is that it is illegal for debt collectors to phone you before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m. In addition, agencies are prohibited from threatening, harassing or speaking in an untoward manner to you.
What’s more, debt collectors are barred from phoning you frequently during the day. They also may not talk to other outfits about your obligation or call you on your job if you have told them not to.
Unfortunately, MRS Associates either regular skirts or outright flouts these directives.
How Should I Handle MRS Associates?
Keep copious notes. Whenever MRS Associates contacts you, jot down what you discussed, the identity of the individual who contacted you, the time the call came in, the phone number used to call you, the time of day of the call, and the call’s length.
In this vein, if you’re getting collection letters from MRS, save every one of them, no matter how much you might want to toss them.
Validate the debt. Whether you owe the debt or not, the burden is on the agency to prove you do. You also need to know if this is an outdated debt, in which case you aren’t obliged to pay anything. The rub is that you need to act within 30 days, so, get moving.
You have rights, too, under statute of limitations, meaning that if the clock has run out on your debt, you may be scot-free. More specifically, the statute is the limited time that debt collectors or creditors must recover a debt. It all depends on your state, but most periods are within the three- to six-year range.
To validate the debt, ask MRS Associates in writing to do so. If the obligation is deemed invalid, MRS must discontinue seeking to collect.
Now you know what to do if MRS Associates is calling you, and a bit more about what it does. The company is legally (and ethically) bound to perform a certain way in its attempt to collect a debt. If it falls short, then you know how to handle it.
Knowledge is power.
