Published Friday, February 10, 2023 by Alan Holdren

Whooooo are Youuuu! Famous lyrics to an old song, but very true when you hear a name of a collector on the phone like, Mrs. Cash or Mr. Moneybags. Though exaggerated, at least one of these is true. Many if not most phone collectors, all of ours, use registered aliases as a day to day working name. Sec 806(6) of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) allows and speaks to the use of these aliases. This section states that consistent use of a name and the ability to contact their employer constitutes this not be deceptive and is permissible by FDCPA standards.

At Atlas, any and all of our aliases are registered with the State of Indiana as to further protect us and not be deemed as deceptive to anyone we come in contact with.

I have been asked why do we use aliases for our collectors and why don’t I use one in my course of business. Two answers to these questions: the first answer is that not everyone that calls us at Atlas is friendly toward us and many of our collectors are single mom’s who name, number and addresses are in the phone book. We do not want someone mad showing up on his or her doorstep at home. Our non-collector management team does not use one, because we are more public and do not want to Confuse our clients or vendors when they call.

One incident a couple years ago almost convinced me to possibly use one with irate debtors that sometimes are transferred to me from a collector wanting to “just talk" with someone else or your manager. I received a few calls in a row from a debtor our automated dialer had called a couple times over the course of an evening, he was in the throws a of having a few cocktails. The messages he was leaving became more and more mean toward me and eventually toward my family being that he now knew where I lived since “my” name was in the phone book with my address. He threatened to “look up my family now that he knew where we lived”. Let us say that a visit from the police “looking” him up stopped any further contact. This does demonstrate the need for aliases.