The phone number 855-615-4878 is associated with Sunrise Credit Services, and it is calling you in an attempt to collect a debt owed to their clients.
Their clients may include any number of companies such as AT&T, Comcast, DirecTV, Sprint, Bank of America, or even a technical school.
Whether you are aware of the debt or not, their calls are intended to coerce you into making a payment without fully considering your options. Here’s how to put an end to it.
This phone number is registered to a third-party debt collection agency called Sunrise Credit Services, which means they are calling you over a debt that they did not originally lend to you. Instead, they were either hired by the original creditor to collect the outstanding balance or they purchased the debt from the original creditor as part of their debt portfolio acquisition business.
As the debt is further removed from the original creditor, it is more likely that the documentation trail becomes incomplete.
Here is some additional information about the company making the calls:
Name: Sunrise Credit Services, Inc.
Type of Company: Debt collection agency and debt buyer
Founded: 1974
Location: 8 Corporate Center Drive, Suite 300, Melville, NY 11747
CEO: Diane Doane-Plowman (women-owned business, WBENC-certified)
Employees: 450-500
Industries: Telecom, cable, banking, education, utilities
Clients: AT&T, Comcast/Xfinity, DirecTV, Sprint, Bank of America, Charter Cable
Better Business Bureau (BBB) rating: B (formerly A+)
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) complaints: 1,061
They Have Called Other People Too
The aggressive nature of these calls is nothing new.
According to the CFPB’s complaint database, over 1,061 complaints have been filed against the company. The BBB reports another 456 complaints, and the PACER case locator shows approximately 180 federal lawsuits filed against the company for violations of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA).
Over the last 12 months alone, the BBB closed 231 complaints against the company, leading to a downgrade in their rating from A+ to B.
Multiple class action lawsuits have been filed against the company, including one for allegedly using misleading language in collection letters and another for refusing to accept a consumer’s dispute of a debt. You are not imagining things, and you are not alone.
Why Is Sunrise Credit Services Calling Me?
They Are Calling about Someone Else’s Bill
Sunrise Credit Services collects debts for many of the big brands you are familiar with. According to complaints filed with the CFPB and the BBB, AT&T, Comcast, DirecTV, Sprint, Bank of America, and Charter Cable have all been identified as original creditors on debts that Sunrise is collecting.
If you have ever had an account with any of these companies in the past, even if you thought the account was closed or paid in full, that is likely the reason for their calls.
However, the majority of consumers who complained about calls from Sunrise report that many of these debts are in dispute, that they do not recognize the debt, or that the debt belongs to someone else entirely.
A user on the personal finance website WalletHub reported that Sunrise was attempting to collect a debt from DirecTV, which they had never owed.
Another user reported that AT&T sent a debt to Sunrise for collection when she had an outstanding balance of just $80 that no one could explain, and that the debt collector was sending her text messages with links to a payment website but was not providing any documentation of the debt.
The Types of Debts That They Collect
Sunrise Credit Services is a collection agency that operates in a number of industries, including: Telecommunications, Cable, Banking, Education, Utilities, and Government.
In addition to their collection business, the company also operates a wholly-owned portfolio acquisition company called Sunrise Capital Management, which purchases debt portfolios directly. This means that they operate as both a third-party debt collector and a debt buyer. The dual role that they play can be confusing for consumers. When a debt collector is also a debt buyer, the chain of title becomes clouded, and the documentation that is supposed to follow the debt may not arrive intact.
Who’s on the Other End of the Line?
How Their Representatives Behave
What is unique about the calls from 855-615-4878 is not the frequency. It is the behavior of the representative on the other end of the line.
According to data from the spam call blocking app RoboKiller, over 13,243 calls have been made from this phone number, and the transcripts from voicemails left by the caller show multiple agent names, which means that this phone number is used by several different representatives.
Consumers report that the agents go far beyond a typical collection script.
A reviewer on the BBB website reported that an agent called her by name and yelled at her, telling her to get a loan from her parents and demanding that she pay a debt of $4,000 in full immediately.
Another reviewer reported that a representative asked her how much of a tax refund she was expecting and told her that she should use the money to pay the debt. When consumers ask to speak with a supervisor, they are often met with resistance.
The same BBB reviewer reported that the agent told her that no one was available to talk with her. Isolating the consumer from anyone who can help is a tactic that debt collectors often use.
When Follow-Up Turns into Harassment
Debt collectors like to refer to what they do as “follow-up,” but when you look at the frequency of calls that consumers report, what you see is a pressure tactic that is designed to wear consumers down until they pay the debt just to make the calls stop.
A complainant to the CFPB reported that Sunrise called her home a dozen times a day for a month. A consumer named Rhonda Ackerman in Denver who posted on ComplaintsBoard reported that she received over 40 calls at all hours of the day and night and finally called the company back to tell them that they had the wrong number.
The company confirmed that they did have the wrong number and promised to stop calling her. Instead, the calls continued. Consumers also report that when they block the phone number, the calls do not stop.
Multiple consumers report that after blocking the 855-615-4878 phone number, they began receiving calls from local numbers that, when answered, turned out to be from the same debt collector.
One user on ComplaintsBoard reported that after blocking the 855 number, he began receiving calls from numbers in his hometown that appeared local but were actually from the debt collector when he answered them.
What They Don’t Want You to Know
The FDCPA and FCRA Are Not Protections but Tools
Most consumers think of the FDCPA and the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) as protections. In reality, these laws are tools. They provide consumers with leverage that they can use to put the burden of proof back where it belongs — on the debt collector and the credit reporting agencies.
Under the FCRA, every item on your credit report must be accurate, verifiable, and complete. If an item on your credit report fails to meet one of these three criteria, the credit reporting agency is obligated to remove it from your report.
Under the FDCPA, debt collectors are prohibited from engaging in deceptive, unfair, or abusive conduct when collecting or attempting to collect a debt, and many of the behaviors alleged against Sunrise in complaints filed with the CFPB and the BBB read like a laundry list of potential violations.
In 2018, a class action was filed against the company that alleged that a Sunrise representative told a consumer that he could not dispute the debt and that disputing the debt would be futile. If the allegations in the class action are true, the statement by the representative would constitute a direct violation of the FDCPA because every consumer has an absolute right to dispute a debt at any time.
Goodwill Letters Will Not Help
Some websites suggest that consumers write a goodwill letter to the collection agency and ask them to remove the account from their credit report as a courtesy. In most cases, this will not work with a third-party debt collector. Companies like Sunrise have no financial incentive to remove an account voluntarily because they have been hired or have paid to collect it. Instead, their business model relies on placing a negative mark on your credit report because the negative mark serves as a pressure tactic to get you to pay the debt. Writing a goodwill letter and asking them to remove it as a courtesy ignores the reality of how the debt collection business operates.
What to Do Instead
File a Credit Report Dispute
The best course of action when dealing with calls from a debt collector like Sunrise Credit Services is not to engage with them directly. Instead, file a dispute with the credit reporting agencies challenging the accuracy and verifiability of the debt that they have placed on your credit report.
The debt collector is then obligated by law to validate the debt by providing documentation to prove it. If they cannot, the agency must remove the item from your report.
Debts that have been sold and resold are notoriously difficult to validate because the documentation trail becomes murky. The original contract, receipts, and payment records that would document the debt and prove that it belongs to you may no longer exist.
A reviewer on the BBB website reported that she requested debt validation from Sunrise and was told that they could not provide the documentation because they did not have it, and yet the company continued to attempt to collect the debt. This is the exact type of scenario that a credit report dispute is designed to exploit.
One Successful Removal Can Change Everything
If you are successful in disputing one collection account and getting it removed from your report, that outcome should change the way you approach every collection account on your report. If the collector could not validate one debt, they may not be able to validate others either.
Getting one removal is not the end of the process. It is the beginning of a systematic review.
Obtain a copy of your full credit report from each of the three major credit reporting agencies, and review every collection entry the same way. Each entry must meet the same legal standard. Debt collection agencies that fail to maintain accurate records on one debt are unlikely to have better records on other debts.
Conclusion
Take Control Now
The calls from 855-615-4878 will not stop on their own. The pattern of behavior from Sunrise is to continue calling consumers even after they ask to be removed or block the phone number.
Waiting and hoping is not a strategy. It is exactly what they are counting on. The law is on your side, but only if you use it. Filing a dispute with the credit reporting agencies forces the collector to prove what they are saying, and based on the history of validation issues at Sunrise, it is likely that they cannot.
FightCollections.com can help. We specialize in empowering consumers to fight back against debt collectors through the strategic use of credit report disputes. If you are getting calls from Sunrise Credit Services, we can review your situation and provide you with information about your options that may result in getting their account removed from your credit report.
Contact us today to learn more.
