Creditor Harassment: The FDCPA and the Rosenthal Act

Two laws limit how debt collectors can treat you. The federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act applies to third-party collectors and debt buyers. California's Rosenthal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act applies to those and, unlike the federal law, to the original creditor as well. Both ban calls before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m., threats, lies about the debt, and contact after you have a lawyer.

Eleven calls before lunch

The phone rings at 7:15 in the morning from a number in Texas. Then again at 7:40. A voicemail says a "case file" has been opened and someone will be "dispatched" to your workplace. Your sister gets a call asking if she knows how to reach you about "a legal matter." At the office, the receptionist takes a message from someone who wouldn't say who they were.

All of that is illegal, and it happens every day in Los Angeles County because most people don't know it's illegal and collectors count on that.

The laws don't cancel the debt. They put a floor under how you get treated while you owe it, and they give you a claim for money damages against a collector who steps over the line. For someone heading toward bankruptcy anyway, that claim is sometimes worth more than the debt.

What the FDCPA prohibits

The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1692, has been on the books since 1977. It covers collection agencies, debt buyers, and law firms that regularly collect consumer debt. It does not cover the bank that issued the card, which is the gap California fills. The specific prohibitions:

• Calling before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m. your local time, without your consent.
• Calling you at work once they know, or have reason to know, the employer doesn't allow it.
• Contacting you at all after they know you're represented by an attorney. Every call has to go to the lawyer.
• Talking about your debt with anyone else: family, neighbors, coworkers, your boss. They may contact a third party once, only to get your location, and they can't say why.
• Threatening arrest, jail, or a lawsuit they don't intend to file or legally can't.
• Pretending to be a lawyer, a government agency, a credit bureau, or a process server.
• Using obscene language, or calling repeatedly with intent to annoy. Under Regulation F, more than seven call attempts in seven days is presumed harassment.
• Collecting interest, fees or amounts the contract or the law doesn't allow.
• Failing to send a written validation notice within five days of first contact, or continuing to collect after you dispute the debt in writing and before they verify it.
• Sending anything that looks like a court document when it isn't, or envelopes that reveal a debt is being collected.

Remedies are actual damages, statutory damages of up to $1,000 per lawsuit, and your attorney's fees. Consumer attorneys take these cases on contingency for that reason. The statute of limitations is one year.

Why the Rosenthal Act matters more in California

The federal statute's blind spot is the original creditor. A bank collecting its own credit card, a hospital's billing department, a furniture store's in-house recovery unit: none of them are "debt collectors" under the FDCPA.

California closed that gap with the Rosenthal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, Civil Code § 1788. It defines a debt collector as anyone who, in the ordinary course of business, regularly collects consumer debts on their own behalf or for others. That reaches the card issuer's own phone bank, the auto lender calling about a late payment, the landlord's management company chasing back rent, and since 2020, mortgage servicers. The Act incorporates most of the FDCPA's conduct rules and adds a few of its own, including a bar on collecting a time-barred debt without saying so.

Remedies are similar: actual damages, statutory damages between $100 and $1,000 for willful violations, and attorney's fees. Since 2022, most collectors operating in California also need a state license, and an unlicensed collector calling you is a complaint waiting to be filed.

So when a client tells us the calls are from the bank itself, the answer in California isn't "there's nothing to be done about that." There is.

Building the record

Nobody wins a harassment claim on memory. If the calls are illegal, start keeping a log the day you read this.

Date, time, number, the name they gave, what they said. Save every voicemail. California is a two-party consent state, so don't record a live call without telling them, but you can tell them, and a collector who hears "this call is being recorded" often changes tone immediately. Keep every letter and envelope. If they contacted your employer or a relative, ask that person to write down what was said.

Then send a written dispute and a written request that they stop calling. Certified mail, return receipt. Under the FDCPA a written cease request means they can contact you only to confirm they've stopped or to tell you they're suing. Each call after that letter is a violation, and the easiest kind to prove.

When you hire us, the letter comes from this office, and that ends most of it. A collector who calls a represented debtor is handing the debtor's lawyer a claim.

How the harassment laws fit with a bankruptcy

Two separate things happen when you file.

The automatic stay ends the calls immediately, by federal injunction, from every creditor, original and third-party alike, without any need to prove harassment. That's the main way we stop creditor harassment and collection lawsuits for clients. A collector who calls after the filing violates section 362 as well.

Your claim against a collector for pre-filing violations does not vanish. It's an asset of the estate, listed in the schedules. In a Chapter 7, the trustee decides whether to pursue it; a small claim is often abandoned back to you. In a Chapter 13 you usually keep the right to pursue it, with any recovery affecting the plan. Either way it has to be disclosed. Hiding it costs people their discharge.

We are not a consumer litigation firm. When a client's harassment log looks like a real case, we refer it to attorneys who do that work, and the referral costs nothing. Our job is the bankruptcy, and the choice between the two chapters is where our time with you goes.

Where the laws don't reach

The statutes protect consumers, not businesses. A collector chasing a debt your LLC owes isn't bound by them. They also don't stop a creditor from doing legal things you don't like: reporting the account to the credit bureaus, suing within the limitations period, or sending letters at a reasonable rate. A call a day from the original creditor, during allowed hours, saying nothing false, is annoying but lawful. The line is conduct, not persistence. Even so, most collectors we hear about break at least one rule, and the ones who break several tend to be working the smallest debts, on the theory that nobody hires a lawyer over $700. Sometimes they're wrong.

From Naomi

the worst one I've seen was a collector who called a client's adult daughter at her job and said her mother was about to be arrested, over a $1,400 medical bill. Every sentence of that call was a violation. My client kept a log for six weeks before she reached me, and it was stronger evidence than most lawyers would have assembled. I sent the file to a consumer litigator I trust. The settlement covered her bankruptcy fee with money left over. She'd been apologizing for being behind. I told her she'd been the only person in that transaction following the law.

Questions people ask about this

Written and reviewed by Naomi Reyes-Ashford, Certified Specialist in Bankruptcy Law, State Bar of California Board of Legal Specialization. Last reviewed September 2026.