FDCPA Violations: What Debt Collectors Can’t Do and What You Can Do About It

An FDCPA violation is anything a debt collector does that breaks the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act: calling you before 8 a.m., telling your employer about your debt, threatening to have you arrested, collecting fees your agreement doesn’t allow, or reporting information to a credit bureau it knows is false. If a collector violates the law, you can sue for your actual damages, up to $1,000 in additional damages, and your attorney’s fees.

This guide lists the most common FDCPA violations, explains who the law covers and how the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Regulation F added to it in 2021, and walks through what to do, including how to sue, if a collector breaks the rules.

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What Is an FDCPA Violation?

The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act is the federal law that limits how debt collectors can collect personal, family, and household debts. An FDCPA violation is any collection practice the law prohibits. The law groups them into four broad categories:

• Communication violations: contacting you at the wrong time or place, or talking to the wrong people about your debt
• Harassment or abuse: conduct meant to harass, oppress, or abuse you
• False or misleading statements: lying about the debt, the collector, or what will happen if you don’t pay
• Unfair practices: collecting money you don’t owe, or using unfair methods to collect it

In 2021, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Regulation F took effect. It spells out how the FDCPA applies to phone calls, texts, emails, and social media, and adds specific rules on validation notices, old debts, and credit reporting. A collector that breaks Regulation F is generally violating the FDCPA too.

What Are the Most Common FDCPA Violations?

These are the violations consumers run into most often, grouped by type.

Contacting you at the wrong time, place, or frequency

• Calling, texting, or emailing before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m. your local time, or at any time the collector knows is inconvenient for you
• Calling more than seven times in seven days about one debt, or calling again within seven days after a phone conversation about it, which Regulation F presumes to be harassment
• Contacting you at work when it knows or has reason to know your employer doesn’t allow it
• Emailing an address it knows your employer gave you
• Contacting you directly when it knows a lawyer represents you on the debt
• Sending emails or texts without a clear way to opt out, or continuing after you opt out
• Contacting you through social media where the public or your contacts can see it
• Continuing to contact you after you’ve told it in writing to stop

The call limits are presumptions, not hard caps. A collector that calls fewer times can still be harassing you, and one that calls more can try to show it wasn’t.

Telling other people about your debt

A collector can generally discuss your debt only with you, your spouse, your attorney, the creditor, and the credit bureaus. It can contact other people, such as a relative, a neighbor, or your employer, only to find your address, phone number, or place of work, and even then it can’t say you owe a debt and usually can’t contact the same person twice. Telling your boss, your family, or your neighbors about your debt is a violation.

Harassment or abuse

• Threatening violence or harm to you, your property, or your reputation
• Using obscene or profane language
• Calling repeatedly or continuously to annoy or harass you
• Publishing a list of people who supposedly refuse to pay their debts

False or misleading statements

• Pretending to be an attorney, a government official, or a credit bureau
• Misstating how much you owe or the legal status of the debt
• Saying you’ll be arrested or jailed for not paying a consumer debt
• Threatening a lawsuit, wage garnishment, or other action it can’t legally take or doesn’t intend to take
• Suing or threatening to sue over a debt that’s past the statute of limitations
• Reporting information to a credit bureau that it knows or should know is false, including failing to report that a debt is disputed

The FDCPA’s full list of false and misleading practices includes more.

Unfair practices

• Collecting any amount, including interest, fees, or charges, that isn’t allowed by the original agreement or by law
• Depositing a postdated check early, or threatening to
• Contacting you by postcard, or putting anything on an envelope that shows it’s about a debt
• Selling or transferring a debt, or placing it with another collector, when it knows the debt was paid, settled, or discharged in bankruptcy

Regulation F’s rules on unfair practices have the details.

Validation and dispute violations

• Not sending a validation notice in the first communication or within five days after it
• Continuing to collect after you dispute the debt in writing during the validation period, before sending verification
• Using language or pressure during the validation period that discourages you from disputing

These are explained below, in the section on validation notices.

Who Can Commit an FDCPA Violation?

Only a “debt collector” as the FDCPA defines it. That includes:

• Collection agencies collecting debts for someone else, such as an agency collecting a hospital bill
• Most debt buyers, whose main business is collecting debts they’ve bought
• Attorneys and law firms that regularly collect consumer debts

It generally doesn’t include the original creditor collecting its own debt through its own employees. When your card issuer’s collections department calls about a past-due account, the FDCPA usually doesn’t apply, though some states have laws that extend similar protections to original creditors. It also doesn’t cover business debts.

That lines up with the difference between collection activity and a collection account. A collection account on your credit report is reported by a collection company, which is usually covered. Calls from the original creditor are collection activity that usually isn’t. Our guide to what a collection account is explains the difference.

Debt buyers deserve a note. In 2017, the Supreme Court held in Henson v. Santander that a company collecting debts it bought for its own account isn’t covered just because it regularly collects debts. But the law also covers any company whose principal business is collecting debts, and courts since then have applied that to debt buyers. That describes most of the debt buyers that report collection accounts.

What Is a Validation Notice, and How Do You Dispute a Debt?

A validation notice is the collector’s written description of the debt. Under Regulation F, the collector has to send it in its first communication with you or within five days after. It must include:

• The name of the creditor you owed on a specific itemization date, such as the charge-off date, and the current creditor
• The amount owed on that date, and an itemization of interest, fees, payments, and credits since
• The amount owed now
• The end date of your validation period and how to dispute the debt

The validation period ends 30 days after you receive the notice. If you dispute the debt in writing within that period, or ask for the name and address of the original creditor, the collector must stop collecting until it sends you verification or the original creditor’s information. Disputing after the validation period ends is still allowed. It just doesn’t trigger the same requirement to pause collection.

A validation request is about the debt. A credit report dispute is about what’s on your report. Our guide to how to remove collections from your credit report explains how the two work together.

Can You Make a Debt Collector Stop Contacting You?

Yes. If you tell a collector in writing to stop communicating with you, it must stop, except to tell you it’s ending its collection efforts or to notify you of a specific action it or the creditor intends to take, such as filing a lawsuit. Contacting you after that, other than for those reasons, is a violation.

A cease letter doesn’t erase the debt. The collector can still report it to the credit bureaus, and the debt owner can still sue if the debt isn’t too old. Use it when the contact itself is the problem. Credit Info Center has a sample cease-communication letter. Keep a copy of what you send. Certified mail isn’t required.

FDCPA Violations and Your Credit Report

Several rules apply when a collector reports to the credit bureaus:

• A collector must contact you about the debt before reporting it, by speaking with you or by sending a letter or electronic message and waiting a reasonable time to see whether it comes back undeliverable.
• Once you dispute a debt, a collector that reports it must report it as disputed.
• A collector that reports to the credit bureaus is also a furnisher under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, with separate duties to report accurately and investigate disputes.

An FDCPA violation doesn’t automatically remove a collection from your credit report. Inaccurate reporting is handled through a credit report dispute, which our step-by-step guide to disputing a collection account walks through.

How Do You Sue a Debt Collector for FDCPA Violations?

Most FDCPA cases are brought by consumer attorneys, and many take them without charging up front. Here’s how the process generally works.

1. Document the violation

Write down the date, time, caller, and what was said for every call, and save every letter, email, text, and voicemail. Note the dates you sent any dispute or cease letter. A call log from your phone carrier can back up a frequency violation.

2. Watch the deadline

You generally have one year from the date of the violation to file an FDCPA lawsuit. Don’t wait until the collector stops.

3. Know what you can recover

• Your actual damages, such as lost wages, medical bills, or emotional distress the violation caused
• Additional damages of up to $1,000, decided by the court
• Your court costs and reasonable attorney’s fees, if you win

In a class action, the class can recover up to $500,000 or 1% of the collector’s net worth, whichever is less. The attorney’s fees provision is why many consumer lawyers take strong FDCPA cases without charging the consumer.

4. Expect the collector’s defenses

A collector isn’t liable if it shows the violation was an unintentional, good-faith error despite procedures reasonably designed to avoid it. Specific, documented violations are much harder to explain away.

5. Consider complaints too

You can also file a complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which forwards it to the company and requires a response, and with your state attorney general and the Federal Trade Commission. A complaint doesn’t get you damages, but it creates a record and often gets a response.

Whether you have a case depends on the facts, so talk to a consumer protection attorney. SmartDispute doesn’t provide legal advice.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can debt collectors call on Sunday?

The FDCPA doesn’t ban Sunday calls outright. The 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. window applies every day. But a collector can’t contact you at a time it knows is inconvenient, so if you tell a collector that Sundays are inconvenient, calling you on Sunday after that can be a violation.

Can debt collectors text you?

Yes. But every text must include a simple way to opt out, the collector must honor your opt-out, and texts are subject to the same time and frequency rules as calls.

Can debt collectors call you at work?

Only if they don’t know or have reason to know your employer prohibits it. Once you tell a collector you can’t take calls at work, further calls there can be a violation. A collector can never tell your employer you owe a debt.

Can debt collectors call your family?

A collector can discuss your debt with your spouse. It can contact other relatives only to find your address, phone number, or place of work, and it can’t tell them you owe a debt.

Can a debt collector come to your house?

The FDCPA doesn’t ban in-person visits, but they’re rare, and the same rules apply: no contact at inconvenient times or places, no threats or harassment, and no telling neighbors about your debt.

Does an FDCPA violation cancel the debt?

No. You may be able to sue the collector for damages, and in some cases a court can offset those damages against what you owe, but the violation doesn’t erase the debt.

Can a debt collector have you arrested?

No. You can’t be arrested for owing a consumer debt, and threatening arrest is an FDCPA violation. If you’re sued, though, ignoring a court order can have serious consequences, so never ignore court papers.

Does the FDCPA apply to my credit card company?

Usually not when the card issuer collects its own debt. It does apply to a collection agency the issuer hires and to most debt buyers. Some states have their own laws covering original creditors.

What’s the Next Step?

If a collector is contacting you, keep a log and save every letter, especially the validation notice. If you think a collector has violated the FDCPA, document it and talk to a consumer protection attorney before the one-year deadline.

If the collector is also reporting a collection account on your credit reports, compare the account across all three bureaus and against the validation notice. SmartDispute lays out every collection account from all three bureaus side by side and drafts suggested disputes for you to review, change, and mail yourself. See how SmartDispute works.