(757) 970-3535

Amanda called and left a message from the VHA letting me know that they were attempting to collect a debt and that I should call 757-970-3535. I could also go to their website www.vhabillpay.com. No such site exists. In addition to this the call came in via a totally different number 760-369-8127

A very nice sounding Amanda called from the number (603) 237-1466‬ originally. I’ve added the voicemail recording. She left the number 757-970-3535 as a call back and even stated their website bhabillpay.com. I am not current on laws but quickly found this in a search;
“ The bottom line is, under the FDCPA, debt collectors should not leave answering machine or voicemail messages. ... Under federal law, creditors are not bound by the FDCPA, only third parties to whom the debts are sold or assigned for collection.-Jul 5, 2012”
A few more articles stated the same. They also stated that you may have given a company permission to contact you and leave messages when first dealing with them and this can carry over to collections but only under them and not third party collection companies. This recording obviously mentions third party but since the number is different this may actually have originated from a current company that is trying to collect payment on an account but wanting any returned calls to go through the 3rd party and therefore able to leave a message? If not than they are violating a law by leaving a message that someone else could have heard having access to my phone (especially in visual voicemail that transcribes like iPhones do). Of course scammers don’t care about laws and they are usually the ones that leave messages. Like the ones that say you have a complaint filled against you and papers will be delivered to your work since they can’t get a hold of you. I may call since they called my work cell number (that I own and also use much as a personal number but have a separate personal number). They already know this number is a valid number since they heard my voicemail and left the message so I’m not worried about alerting them to that. Most real debt collectors will ask to verify your personal information so I wouldn’t be doing that and then we would be at an impasse so I may still not be able to find out if it’s a legitimate collectors. The other thing is that I am well aware of the only one account that I am behind on and dealing directly with that collector already to make payments so there should be no other and that alone raises red flags on this. Legitimate collectors that have purchased old accounts will try and contact you to collect, even though it’s past the date they can legally collect. It cannot affect your credit anymore and they even have to state this.
I had one account from 2009 that I could not pay and was affected by it on my credit report for the next 8 years till I had it removed. I stopped hearing about this debt well before this was able to come off my credit report. This debt was most likely sold multiple times to different collection companies and over 12 years after the initial default, this company tries to collect.
I hope this was informative.