You've been called by Midland Credit Management at 800-296-0721 because they believe you owe them money.
Midland Credit Management is a debt collection company that purchases debt from another company and tries to get you to pay. To deal with the situation, you need to know who is calling you and understand their business.
Midland Credit Management is not your original creditor. They are a debt collector that buys charged-off consumer debt from original creditors at a discount (often 3-4 cents on the dollar), then attempts to collect the debt from the consumer.
What is Midland Credit Management?
Company name: Midland Credit Management, Inc. (MCM)
Type of company: Debt collection agency
Parent company: Encore Capital Group, Inc.
Location: San Diego, California
Types of debt: Primarily credit card debt, but also auto loans, telecom debt, and consumer finance debt
Number of employees: Approximately 7,400 (24 U.S. offices)
Revenue: $1.316 billion (2024 fiscal year)
State licensing: Licensed in all 50 states
BBB rating: A+ (not accredited), > 1,000 complaints in the last 3 years, with a 9% resolution rate
Is This Caller Calling Only You?
Hardly. In fact, MCM (and its parent company) have been assessed more than $230 million in regulatory penalties.
In 2015, the CFPB fined them for using robo-signed court documents and filing lawsuits without intending to prove the debt was valid, which resulted in $42 million in refunds to consumers and a $10 million civil penalty.
In 2020, the CFPB sued them again for violating the consent order, with another $15 million penalty. In 2018, a settlement with 42 state AGs found that employees were signing 200-400 unverified affidavits per day. And in 2022, Massachusetts reached a $12 million settlement after MCM was found to have made up to 15 calls in a 7-day period.
Why is Midland Credit Management calling you?
The first question you need to ask yourself is if this caller is even calling about you. MCM buys millions of accounts, and the accompanying data may be incomplete or incorrect.
Did you really incur this debt?
It's possible that the debt may have changed hands several times by the time MCM bought it, and critical information may have gotten lost in the shuffle. As one RoboKiller user put it: "This is a foreign scam claiming you have bad debt. We have not had debt in our entire lives. They are trying to get your Social Security, bank & credit card numbers."
The number one complaint filed with the CFPB against MCM is debt collection attempts for debts not owed, which includes debts not recognized by consumers, debts already paid, and debts due to identity theft.
Could this be a wrong number?
One YouMail user reported that MCM was calling, even though it wasn't for them (their voicemail clearly stated their name), and that they were "planning on reporting them to my state's Attorney General for harassment and unwanted solicitation."
When a company is buying millions of accounts with missing information, wrong numbers are bound to happen. If you don't recognize the debt, that's all the more reason to check your credit report instead of speaking with the caller.
Is the debt legitimate?
Let's assume that the debt really is yours. In that case, the question becomes whether the debt is valid and whether MCM can prove it. These are not the same things.
Have you been sent written verification?
Under the FDCPA, a debt collector must send you written notice within 5 days of initial contact that includes the amount of the debt and your right to dispute. In the CFPB's 2020 enforcement action against MCM, they found that the company failed to provide required disclosures approximately 750,000 times.
Start with your credit report
The best way to get a sense of what's going on is to pull your credit report. You can think of it as reconnaissance, because it shows you exactly what the collector is claiming.
Has the statute of limitations expired?
There is a statute of limitations (typically between 3-6 years, depending on the state) for collecting a debt. Once the statute of limitations runs out, a collector cannot sue you for the debt. The CFPB found that MCM filed approximately 100 lawsuits on time-barred debts in violation of its consent order.
Note that even if the statute of limitations has run out on a debt, it can still appear on your credit report for up to 7 years from the original delinquency date. However, it can no longer be the basis for a lawsuit. The 7-year clock for credit reporting is fixed, and starts from the date of first delinquency.
What are others experiencing with this caller?
As of this writing, RoboKiller has recorded 38,774 calls from this number, with 293 user reports and an entirely negative reputation score. Nomorobo independently identifies this as a robocall, with high call volume.
How aggressive is the caller?
As one YouMail user put it: "They call 4 or 5 times a day." Another RoboKiller user says they've gotten over 80 calls. Multiple users report blocking one number, only to get a call from a different MCM number the next day.
The second most common complaint is that MCM will call and call, but never leave voicemails. As one CallFilter.app user put it: "Multiple calls from this number, no message left so I finally blocked it. No message left means they want a live person to answer and I don't have time for scammers."
Are they calling people who don't owe them anything?
As one 800Notes user put it: "Called me, I didn't answer. When I looked it up it said Debt collector. I don't have any Debt."
These wrong numbers are consistent with what we've seen from regulators about the quality of the data when debts are purchased in bulk and the information is incomplete.
What are your legal protections in this situation?
The good news is that you have a lot more rights than you think you do. There are both federal and state laws that create specific protections for consumers that limit the actions debt collectors can take, and prescribe penalties when those limits are violated.
Do you know your federal rights?
Under the FDCPA, collectors may not call at unreasonable hours, use threats or violence, make repeated calls to harass, or misrepresent the debt. Under the FCRA, you have the right to dispute any information on your credit report that you don't think is accurate, and the credit reporting bureau must investigate the dispute within 30 days.
Advocacy companies that help consumers dispute their credit reports use these laws as offensive tools to challenge accounts that collectors can't fully validate.
Are there state laws you should know about?
On top of federal laws, most states have laws that offer additional protections to consumers that they may not be aware of. For example, while federal law limits the amount of money that can be garnished from your wages, some states prohibit wage garnishment for consumer debt entirely, while others set a maximum below the federal level. Some states also exempt money in your bank account from seizure.
For example, Massachusetts law limits collectors to 2 calls per week, and MCM was found to have made up to 15 calls in a 7-day period. Your state may have similar specific limits that MCM is violating without you realizing it.
Should you dispute this account on your credit report?
This is the million-dollar question. Most consumers, when they get a call like this, think that their only option is to negotiate or pay. But that may not be the case.
Will paying off a collection help your credit score?
If you pay off a collection account, it will still stay on your credit report for the full 7 years. The clock starts from the date of first delinquency, when you originally missed a payment, and nothing will change that. Paying off a collection account offers no practical benefit to your credit score in most scoring models.
If paying a collection account doesn't help your credit score, the next question becomes whether you can get the account removed entirely by disputing it. The problem is that debt collectors who buy debts for pennies on the dollar often don't have access to the original documentation they need to verify the account when it's disputed.
How do you dispute a credit report?
Disputing your credit report is a systematic process that uses the verification and substantiation requirements of the FCRA and FDCPA. When you dispute something on your report, the credit reporting bureau will investigate and ask the collector to verify. If they don't have the documentation, the item gets removed.
This is consumer advocacy in its purest form: using the law to make sure that what's on your report is accurate and can be legally defended.
The process takes time and patience. Between the investigation and verification timelines, it takes weeks and months to get meaningful results. Credit repair is a marathon and not a sprint, but the systematic nature means that each step leads logically to the next, and the outcomes are relatively predictable.
What's the next step?
If you're getting calls from 800-296-0721, you now know that Midland Credit Management is on the other end of the line, and that they have a documented history of more than $230 million in regulatory penalties. The single most important thing you can do is pull your credit report and see what exactly MCM is claiming.
You don't have to go this alone
At FightCollections.com, we specialize in fighting debt collectors by disputing inaccurate, unverifiable, and erroneous information on consumers' credit reports. If Midland Credit Management is reporting an account to your credit report that you don't recognize or that you believe is incorrect, we can help you navigate the dispute process and pursue removal through the proper legal channels.
Take the first step today
Every day that an inaccurate collection account stays on your credit report is a day that it could be affecting your financial opportunities.
Head to FightCollections.com or call us today for a free consultation to find out how our systematic approach to credit report disputes can work for you.
