On March 30 of this year I published a blog entitled "Debt Collectors Who Will Sue You". Well how about I turn the tables and sue one of them? Yes, that is correct Robert L. Friedman will soon be suing a well known slime ball debt collector firm for violations of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. You need to know all about this so when its your turn to get them you can come out with guns blazing.
In March,2008 I received a "Settlement Offer" on an account [date] which was erroneously attributed to me with the original creditor listed as GE/Exxon. Emmmmm, I did know that GE and Exxon merged, did you? Anyway the letter claimed I owed a current balance of $400.00 but they were willing to settle for $200.30. I don't know where the $.30 came from. The sender of this correspondence was an entity we'll call "ABC Debt Collector" and they're collecting for the current owner of the account which is a conglomerate of debt buyers and collectors that I believe is part of or owned by the Sherman group of collectors.
I called ABC Debt Collector after getting their letter and asked who owned the company and what their mailing address was. The half literate person on the other end of the phone refused to give me this information. It was not until I demanded to speak to her supervisor that she complied.
Within days of receiving the letter from ABC Debt Collector I sent a cease and desist letter via [replied with] certified mail (one of which I use in my STCF System). In the letter I explained that I had no knowledge of this debt and that they should immediately comply with the law, not to have any further contact with me, and to be sure that this fictitious debt was not reported to any of the credit bureaus.
I should also mention that copies of this letter also went to the Ohio State Attorney General's Office because that is where the collector has an office as well as the Attorney General for Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal. It's always a smart move to Cc: attorneys general and even the Federal Trade Commission. Even if these parties do not move on your complaint it is then harder for the debt collector criminals to claim that they never received your cease and desist letter or to ignore it. Further, in my experience and in the experience of my attorney, the more complaints these agencies get the more aware they are of the epidemic problem of debt collection harassment. Because of a lack of resources, they may not investigate your one complaint, but if everyone who is harassed makes a complaint, they are more likely to take action against these collectors.
In response to my cease and desist letter, On March 21, 2008 I received a letter from ABC Debt Collector advising me that they"....have stopped collecting on this account and [nad] have returned your account to the creditor listed above." At that point I figured I was done with them. NOT!!!!!!
On May 2 of this year I received another "Settlement Offer" from ABC Debt Collector . On the same account! This time they claimed I owed $442.14 to GE/Exxon but were willing to settle for $221.07. How big of them:-). They also added the name of one of collection companies that is part of the conglomerate [sub companies of their client] as now being the [original] "current" creditor. I suppose I was supposed to be moved by this.
Since helping people deal with debt collectors and weeding out their unfair and deceptive tactics [the subject matter here] is my business, I started salivating and licking my chops. I thought to myself that I would have no problem taking money from these morons for law violations. I consulted with Attorney Sarah Poriss , who regularly brings suit against debt collectors and who defends people being sued on old credit card debt, and who I have previously mentioned on this blog. [and] She believed the debt collector had already violated the FDCPA because they promised me a year ago that they would close the account and stop collecting, and here they were trying to get money from me again. There is a provision of the FDCPA that states that if the consumer notifies the debt collector in writing that the consumer refuses to pay the debt, the collector must cease attempts to collect the debt. Her advice to me was to send them a certifed letter stating that I refuse to pay the subject debt.
The object of this exercise was to see if they knew that they were required to cease attempts to collect since I informed them in writing that I refused to pay the debt under the FDCPA. No such luck. I holstered my weapon. But wait till you hear what happened next.
Thirteen days later I received a letter from ABC Debt Collector stating that they have stopped collecting on the subject debt, returned the collection account to their client and if they reported the account to the "credit repositories" they would request that the account(s) be deleted from my credit report. OK, I guess they can do that.
But at the end of May I received another letter- but this time from ABC Debt Collector's parent company confirming that I would receive no further communications on the subject account. They also included a paltry, pathetic attempt to insinuate that they are validating the account and which claimed that the validation verifies the debt. I have discussed validation on this blog previously and if you have read some of my [p]articles you know that validation of an account means presenting proof that the debtor applied for the account, used the account, with supporting documentation; not a phony affidavit or an in house generated account statement. Wow, I did not even rate any of that fraudulent stuff. These bozos just sent a printed letter titled "Validation of Debt" which stated that the account was acquired from another sleaze ball debt collection outfit and that it was now owned by the present sleaze ball debt collector. No documents, no copies of anything. I guess they expect that their word is compelling enough.
Oh well my attorney now has this matter in her very capable hands.
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