Miss a payment, maybe two and you may receive a call from your creditor. What if the only number you provided to your creditor at time of application was your cell phone number?

Most of, if not all, collection and predictive system companies are working on some sort of a program or application to identify and scrub for cell phone numbers to eliminate them from predictive and power dialing.  Penalties for using such are severe and enforced based upon recent TCPA rulings affecting creditor collection and bank account receivables businesses.

USA reports “more than one in four U.S. homes, or 26.6%, had only a wireless phone as of June 2010, up from 13.6% in 2007. The percentage of wireless-only homes increased in every state...” This double digit growth of cell phone usage as a primary number will continue to grow, and we’ll see more businesses using wireless technology as well.

Given the TCPA ruling and collections companies’ use of predictive dialers, there is a valid need for employing a reliable system to scrub cell phone numbers from a debtor’s information file. However, let’s be aware that should a consumer provide his or her cell phone number on a credit application, he or she is “consenting” to that number’s use in automated debt collection calls.  This is intrinsically different than a collection company obtaining a debtor’s cell phone number from data service, or another source.

If truly the concern is the cost to the debtor, those cell phone charges incurred whilst a collection agency attempts to make contact with a debtor, perhaps seeking a new potential law to allow the calls to a cell phone with more rigorous rules and procedures. For example, cell phone charges to be refunded to the debtor, or alternatively, the collection agency completely pays in full those charges associated with dialing cell phone numbers altogether.  Might such a law provide a three way-win for the debtor, the creditor, and credit collection agency?  Perhaps it may ultimately provide a win for the Government and State legislation processes on the issue as well.