Study Finds a Person Answered 82% of Calls to Canadian Collection Agencies

CollectionAgencies.ca called 211 phone numbers, including the main number of all 57 agencies in its directory. Most reached a person within a minute.

TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA, October 20, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — A person answered 82% of calls to Canadian collection agencies in a study by CollectionAgencies.ca, which called 211 collection agency phone numbers from October 13 to 16, 2026. The numbers included the main phone number of all 57 agencies in CollectionAgencies.ca’s directory and the agency phone numbers searched most on the site.

The study measured how easy it is to reach a person at a collection agency. People contacted by an agency often call to confirm a debt is genuine or to find out the original creditor before paying or disputing it.

What the calls found:

– A person answered 172 of the 211 calls (82%). Half were answered within 33 seconds, and three in four within a minute.
– Counting each agency once, by its main phone number, a person answered at 46 of the 57 agencies (81%).
– 39 calls (18%) never reached a person: 25 ended in voicemail and 14 ended with no one answering. Twelve of those 39 never gave a company name, and four transferred the caller, but each transfer ended up going to voicemail.
– 56 of the 57 agencies’ main phone numbers gave the company’s name, either in a recording or when a person answered.
– 48% of greetings said the call may be recorded or monitored, and 40% offered French.
– Two calls were answered by an AI voice assistant.

“A lot of people phone a collection agency to find out more about a debt before they pay or dispute it, especially when they don’t recognize it,” said Joe Conlon, founder of CollectionAgencies.ca. “We wanted to see how easy it is to reach a person to do this. Most of the time someone answered within a minute and told us who we’d reached.”

Collection agencies often use many phone numbers. At the time of the study, CollectionAgencies.ca listed 748 verified phone numbers for these 57 agencies. One agency had 99, and 19 had 10 or more. Between July 14 and October 13, 2026, the site’s pages for the 211 numbers in the study received 23,488 visits from Google search. Of those visits, 89% were for numbers where a person answered.

The 57 agencies are a sample of the collection agencies operating in Canada. Each holds a provincial collection agency licence.

Each number was called once, between 9:48 a.m. and 6:11 p.m. Eastern Time, from a personal phone number with caller ID showing, and each wait was timed. Every call that didn’t reach a person was made between 9:51 a.m. and 4:43 p.m. Eastern Time, during the working day at the agency’s head office. When a person answered, the call was ended immediately, without discussing any account. Each result reflects a single call, so a call at another time could have a different result.

The full results, including the result for every agency’s main phone number and the study method, are at https://collectionagencies.ca/research/collection-agency-call-study. Call-level data is available to journalists on request. Results may be cited as the CollectionAgencies.ca call study, October 2026.

About CollectionAgencies.ca

CollectionAgencies.ca is a directory of Canadian collection agencies that helps people identify who is calling or texting them about a debt. Launched in October 2025, it lists the phone numbers and text message short codes collection agencies use, the creditors they collect for, and agency licences by province. Between July 21 and October 18, 2026, it had more than 75,000 visitors, and 9 in 10 new visitors arrived from search engines. The site doesn’t collect debts or act for any collection agency.

Joe Conlon
CollectionAgencies.ca
info@collectionagencies.ca