Loan lenders of the payday variety will often ask the borrower for a reference or two in order to authenticate the borrower’s credentials. This is a normal procedure and is used to protect the interests of the money lender.

In fact the references are not asked so as to ensure that the candidate is right for the loan. This does not work in the way that an employer calls up the candidate’s the family and friends to ask whether he is right or not. Contrary to this, references are there to provide whereabouts or information regarding the candidate if he defaults his loan payments. In that case, what happens if you turn out to be that reference and your phone starts ringing and you aren’t responsible for somebody’s debt?

Bound by Fair Debt Collections Process Act, you can be rest assured that even as a reference you will not be harassed by the collector himself. You are a reference and you will be needed only when the candidate has moved to a different address and the collector does not know it, or if the employment of the candidate has changed. Collectors will by no means be eligible to reveal the fact that the candidate has eclipsed the date of the payment, and for that matter, you are just an informant. Nothing more or less.

So what choices do you have to stop receiving phone calls about the loan and the candidate and what needs to be done so that they don’t bother you. You have some options to get rid of the phone calls and that comes when you aren’t a co-signer yourself.

You are in no way responsible for another person’s debt, and this means that the collectors will in no way try to extort the debt money from you. You have the power of the law if the phone calls become something of a hassle and you can tell them to stop calling you. You can take their agency name and address and can threaten them with a warning that you will be contacting the attorney General if the harassment does not stop. That’s your power.

The retailers need to be explicitly notified that you are not responsible for another person’s debt and this means that they will in no way try to harass you in regards to the debt.  You can tell the individual who listed you in the debt to expressly remove the name if the harassment continues.

If payday loan officials keep contacting you about the debtor and the loan, you have a legal right to tell them to stop that process and get your name removed from the account. You are just listed there as a reference and your job is to provide information to the best of your knowledge, not give out money on behalf of the debtor himself. Of course, loans like these are great in times of emergencies, but they can be an inconvenience to others in the process itself.