That's not nice or helpful and doesn't make my job any easier as people's perceptions are that we're all a bunch of thugs who will kick the door down if people don't pay. Sometimes I FEEL like doing that when no-one answers the door, it's pissing down with rain & you can see the telly/lights on...
Personally, I don't. I always leave my freephone 0800 number for debtors to call if they're not in when I visit; the 0870 number is for my clients to contact me.
Fair play to you for calling them back. They should supplement their phone/text work with letters which would say who the creditor is and how much is outstanding so hold on for one of those I guess.
Buchanan Clark & Wells are a debt collection agency based in Scotland. When I was still at Amex, my colleague signed them up to collect some foreign debt (in France, I think) but they weren't very good and were binned fairly quickly.
As a doorstep debt collector myself, I get a lot of cases for...