Third party debt collectors may be violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). This is a federal law restricting the use of automated equipment to dial cellular telephones. The statute prohibits using any automatic telephone dialing systems or pre-recorded voices to make any calls to a paging service, a cell phone, a specialized mobile radio service or calls that the party may be charged for the call.


Many debt collection companies use pre-dictive dialers. Predictive dialers place calls without human intervention until a connection is made, in which case the dialers then attempt to connect the recipient with a debt collector. In most cases, the debtor has not authorized automated placement of calls to his or her cell phone and often did not even provide their cell number to the defendant or original creditor.

Victims can receive statutory damages even if the defendant (bill collectors) are only negligent but have violated the TCPA.