Over the past 2 years I've received many calls from collections agencies, especially regarding one particular individual, who at some point must have had my number or given mine as a "fake #" to get collections agencies off their backs.

Yet the worst call I've ever got was last night, when someone from Mullooly, Jeffrey, Rooney and Flynn spoke with my husband and, in a horrible tone, said, "We have just talked to your father, and we're going to talk about this right now!" You see, my husband's father is very ill, so this call scared my husband momentarily. He told them, politely, that he did not know what they were talking about, and that they probably had the wrong number. They continued the rude remarks and, after finally finding out where they were calling from and whom they were seeking to speak to, he repeated to them that they had the wrong number. They replied, again very rudely, "Oh, I don't think so!" He had to hang up on them.

Since my husband was sick, he didn't really get a chance to tell them where to stick their phone, so I called them today hoping, at best, to find out how they got our number (so I can deal with that) and, at worst, for an apology. I spoke with the office manager, and he denied being able to find our phone # (which hopefully means they believed my husband after all), or the name of the guy in question. The office manager was in no way apologetic and said, in a bad tone, "well, your number is no longer in our database, so nobody will be calling you anyhow." I told him I wasn't so sure about that because I'm quite certain they have called us in the past, we have called them to remove us from their database, and they somehow seem to have got hold of our number again - for the exact same guy. He told me to get more information next time. I think THEY should get more information next time.

If any businessowner reading this is considering hiring them to do their collections work, I ask that they don't. I know collections is far from being a friendly business, but I have spoken to many collections agencies both through my work at a bank and through the bad luck of having a recycled number, and I have never dealt with anyone this nasty. These people don't care who they're speaking with. What if you owed them money, and they spoke like this to your teenage son or daughter because they "didn't believe" they weren't speaking to you?