Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background.

Debt collector has wrong person and is contacting my employer
Debt collectors are just doing their job as many people want to evade payment by not responding and skipping their debts, and they talk tough to force people found to make their obligated payments based on what they can afford and that’s all. I’m in the UK, but I assume the process is similar.   Before I begin, I worked in debt collection and I presume that the debt collection agency have requested details for a source like a college and you have been returned as a possible match as you name is identical to their debtor but with differing date of birth etc. College/University students are very nomadic in nature and addresses aren’t very helpful when they are not current, but details of a current address/employer to a very similar name would be a possible lead to debtor and the debt collector is simply acting on flawed information which is fairly rare, and  cases such as these are resolved when you can simply confirm your date of birth and other details so that they can eliminate you from their chasing activities.  Whilst you may feel uncomfortable about giving your details, you are not the debtor and will have to confirm this, the debt collector is only interested in collection of valid debts values, and the current letter is most likely a standard letter to get you to act assuming that you are the debtor. If you try to ignore this or only partly answer their contact by telling them not to contact your employer etc, they will assume that you are the debtor and step up pursuit  by contacting at work by phone, in person, or by other means, and you employer will see you in a bad light… I would advise you to write to them a one-time only letter confirming details of your home address and insist on correspondence in writing only to that home address, in addition you should confirm your full name including full middle names, date of birth, that you have never attended the college in question,  agreed to any such debt in writing, and that you are not the correct data subject as the ss number also differs.  The letter should also go on to state a range of costs which require payment before you act further, ie subsequent letter $xx.xx amount attending court $xx.xx per hour(not cheap) and that if they harass you or otherwise affect your standing with your credit reference, or employer or anyone else that you ‘Will’ take further action and ‘May’ take them to your ‘Local’ court and pursue the costs list above and  losses as a result of their actions including pain and suffering. Speak tough and mean business and act decisively and your message will win through, share your details with them once and above all copy your employer in so that they know this is a case of mistaken identity. You can add a large heading at the top of the letter of ‘Mistaken Identity’ to prove your point.