Should I take legal action over repeated debt collection calls to the wrong person which damaged my business?
I am in Western Australia and have been receiving repeated calls from a debt collection company (Credit Corp) about people I do not know.
At the worst point, I was receiving up to three calls per day for 5 days a week. This continued for approximately two to three months, despite repeatedly explaining that they had the wrong person and asking for my number to be removed. (I validated the name they were chasing, it was not me).
The calls came from many different mobile numbers, which made them impossible for Telstra to identify or block.
I run a web design and IT company. Calls to my mobile are often urgent and can involve hacked websites, offline email systems, compromised payment accounts or other critical client issues. our commercial SLA's mean I therefore cannot simply ignore unfamiliar numbers, I must answer them.
The calls repeatedly interrupted billable work, client meetings and sleep. In some cases, I left meetings to answer. When I tried to return to clients afterward, they had sometimes gone to lunch, left the office or moved onto another call, resulting in lost time and income.
I have call records, screenshots, correspondence and evidence showing that I repeatedly asked the company to stop. I have also made a complaint through the financial complaints process (AFCA), but the company has offered only a nominal amount.
My main questions are:
- Should I now speak to a lawyer and consider legal action?
- Can repeated calls of up to three times per day for several months amount to harassment, particularly when I was not the debtor?
- What debt collection regulations or guidelines would the company be required to comply with?
- Does continuing to call after being told they have the wrong person make the conduct more serious?
- Can I claim lost billable income where I can provide call logs, business records and evidence of my usual hourly rate?
- Could there also be a privacy breach if my mobile number was incorrectly attached to another person’s debt account?
- Should this be reported to a financial regulator, consumer regulator, privacy regulator or all of them?
- Would it be better to wait for the current complaints process to finish before commencing legal action?
I am not disputing or avoiding a debt. The debt does not belong to me, and I do not know the people they were attempting to contact ( I have a name of the guy, thats all).
I am trying to determine whether this is serious enough to justify legal action rather than accepting a minimal settlement?