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@trujunglist: i didn’t learn about credit untill i got in the high risk finance industry and not only had to pull ppls bureau, but decipher it as well. you’d be surprised what all goes on there. everytime you apply for anything credit wise, it stores when and where you applied at, what job you claimed you work, and the adress you claim to be at. so if someone tells me they’ve been at their address for 5 years, and i can see on their bureau they’ve applied with 4 different addresses in the last so many years, i know weather they are full of sh*t or not. i can see all kinds of stuff on there. part of most application process include a part where consistancy on information plays into the decision. even on our loan calculator which is popular one in the industry has a spot for your “gut feeling” although it just says gut, but it plays into the scoring system which determines if your are approved or not.
so remember to be honest on you applications or it could hurt you.
Things were much simpler when the mob was running debt collection.
@deadlizard: Haha! I’m just picturing that:
“You want debt verification? How ’bout we break one of your kneecaps? That enough verification for you, recording boy?”
@num1skeptic:
As a skiptracer I had to do the exact same thing. Pull reports, decipher information, figure out if the debt was paid already, figure out if it’s past the statute of limitation, find what’s current and what’s not, etc etc. Of course, I wasn’t giving people loans so I didn’t have to dive too much into it beyond the most recent info (although a trick to find people was to go back to the first 1 or 2 addresses; that’s likely a “permanent” address), just calling them to see if they were home and then hanging up on them and forwarding the account to a collector.
the reason there is limitations on things like these is so these calls don’t happen. my problem with all this is why didn’t the first few collection agencies that recieved the account ever pursue? if providian or whoever it was wanted to do something about the debt they had seven years. thats plenty of time for action. they dropped the ball. there very well could have, and sounds like should have a judgement on this guys bureau, and a garnishment on his paycheck. apparently providian thought the money was pocket change and not worth it. so who sent who the wrong message?
I’m kind of thinking that they did pursue, couldn’t skiptrace him because he kept moving around and changing jobs (the bill was what, 600 bucks?), giving them false information, lying to them, etc, until finally they’d sell off the account to another agency. He kept that going as long as possible using his understanding of the law and just recently the statue was reached.
@trujunglist: he knew there wasn’t a judgement on his bureau though. even the collector knew that. you can change jobs and stuff and run all you want. you can’t run from a judgement. if they pursued, the judgement would be there, and game would be played. after you put a judgement on him, there is legally nothing more you can do.
besides the obvious: skiptrace, and garnish check.
@trujunglist: Restaurants have signs in the bathrooms that say “Employee must wash hands before returning to work. Los Empleados deben lavarse las manos antes de regresar al trabajo” in two languages. Which is to say, even a minimum wage fast food worker is made aware of the very basic food safety regulations, because, you know, laws that directly affect the way you work are important. So it seems awfully odd that a debt collection agent wouldn’t know the very basic laws about what they can and cannot do to pursue debts.
We are so priveleged to have folks post here who have perfect credit and have never broken any laws.
@spinachdip: the debt collection agencies truley keep their employees in the dark. and lie if they need to to cover their azz. you can’t record their conversation legally, and i’d be willing to bet you never get them to cough up their copy, so its he said she said. it would be impossible to prove what laws they broke verbally. now a letter is documentation and proof.
That was awesome. Thank you.
@spinachdip:
Well, I see what you’re saying. I also think that food prep is so common sense that there need not be signs stating that. But, at the same time, food prep is also much more dangerous than bill collection, because if you screw up someone’s food, they might die. If you call a debtor, they admit to the debt and laugh at you, and then you screw up and break the law, then.. they laugh harder?
@num1skeptic:
I was thinking that he probably gave them enough of a run around so that they decided not to get a judgement. You know, after a year or so, he finally gets around to contacting the original collections agency. He plays games with them for a few months, makes a payment or two, then skips out again. They can’t find him but think he’s maybe willing to pay, so they spend more time trying to find him. Maybe they do months later, and he apologizes, makes another small payment, and then completely disappears. They still think he might pay, so getting a judgement would be jumping the gun. The account gets lost in the system for a while, and maybe that agency goes out of business and sells it off to another agency. etc etc. Rare, maybe, but definitely possible for it to go around in circles long enough so that there wouldn’t be a judgement. Apparently, he was making payments, so that may have given him the leeway he needed.
Hrm, just did some googling. Yeah this guy is 100% right. They were trying to collect a debt that is 7 years old. As long as this guy didn’t do anything to the account from 2004, because SoL is 3 years and if he made a payment it would be extended, he’s in the clear pending the company trying to sue him. So the collection agency has no right to try and collect the debt.
[www.fair-debt-collection.com]
I recently had an issue with a debt collection agency named “GB Collects”. They swore I owed them money for a one year renewal of my LLC. I told them this was impossible, because I did not renew my LLC last year. I sent an e-mail to the head of their department, who was pretty easy to track down, insisting that I be given written documentation to prove that I owed this. I also sent a cease and desist letter. He said he would “look into” getting me documentation, but that he wouldn’t honor my cease and desist letter. I said “screw it”, and filed an official complaint with the FDCPA, and attached his e-mail stating that he would not honor my cease and desist letter. I haven’t heard from them since.
Sure, it would have been easier to just pay the cash and be done with it, but that’s my money. Nobody gets to say that I owe it to them without proving it. I also had a similar situation where Global Vantedge kept calling me and my old roommate (!!!) about a credit card debt, even though I’d consolidated it a year ago and paid it. Calling my roommate is crossing the line, and I didn’t hesitate to raise holy hell with that “poor, innocent” collector when I got him on the phone. I’ll play fair if they do. They don’t.
@sexierthanjesus:
I’m tellin’ ya, you’re one of the few who were legit. Most debtors don’t play fair. So, you know, it goes both ways.
@trujunglist: I’m sorry you had a crappy job, but if debt collectors are cutting corners by hiring naive high-school students to handle legally sensitive matters and aren’t training them properly, that’s not my problem or anybody else’s on this board, it’s theirs. There’s a reason they don’t let high-school students work as jailers or court clerks or title underwriters either.
@trujunglist:
The thing is, debt collectors get so personal about it like you seem to be doing. Like, THEY are the ones owed money.
Also, judging by your views, I am scum, because my credit history doesn’t show my thousands of dollars in prescriptions I pay a month, my father’s homelessness, that I was laid off, the job market in Florida at the time, me helping to support my mother dealing with a recent amputee husband that cannot work, the fact that I was living on someone’s couch, etc.
not everything is in a “file”.
@trujunglist: It’s not my fault that a debt collector can’t (or as num1skeptic suggests, won’t) adequately train its employees.
Look, you’re making it a personal thing, like the borrower is hurting the creditor’s feelings by not repaying debt. But that’s not how creditors think – credit is merely an investment. Some people are safe investments, some people are risky investments. Credit companies know exactly what they’re doing when they invest in risky – it’s natural that some will default. So let’s not shed tears for poor little Citicards and Capital Ones who aren’t getting the money they were promised – at least they managed to sell off the debt.
@kogeliz:
They are the ones owed money. If you don’t pay them, they’ll likely be paid much less money and/or fired. You know what it’s like not to have a job, so you know what I’m talking about. They don’t want to get calls during dinner time by one of their co-workers either…
@trujunglist: sorry i was gone away but i don’t think this guy is really that clever. obviously he wasn’t that hard to contact. i still say that providian had 7 years to pursue him and they didn’t. they don’t need to know where you are to sue you. if you don’t show, you lose. i think this is straight up, providian would rather sell his $600 owed for $250 to a different collection agency and be done with it. much more cost effective than sueing. one company probably tried with no luck and sold to another and then another. after 7 years, the agency calling now probably knew it was past limitations and bought the account for practically nothing. they took a risk when they bought the 7 year old debt and therefore are totally in the wrong for even calling. surely they knew this guy was a deadbeat when they bought the account. they were just hoping to scare or intimidate him into paying, and hope he paid.
@trujunglist: Then they’re looking at it the wrong way. Their employer is not owed money. It just so happens that they specialize in investing in high-yield assets.
which leads me to my next question……what idiot company buys accounts that have been unpaid for 7 years? if they weren’t paying the other agenies, and the debt is over 7 years old, they are the suckers for buying it. i hope they lost millions on buying accounts like these.
although if they called him 6 years 11 months and 30 days on the last hour and he admitted he owed the debt, that opens him up for 7 more years of collections.
learn a lesson from oj. live your lie till even you believe it. i would have told the agency that i have no clue of what they’re talking about and that i’ve never had an account with providian, but i did have a problem with someone stealing my identity years back and that i would need written documentation to prove i owed this. deny it all the way! when they say something about payments being made, i’d say well maybe the id thief payed it to get a higher spending limit before he vanished.
@trujunglist: You can try to justify it all you want but him being a jerk, deadbeat, loser, a-hole whatever does not excuse the illegal tactics being employed to collect a debt.
So from what I understand, the lady is claiming that the man owes $1500 on a $600 cc bill that was charged off in 1999. In 2003 the statute of limitations runs out on the debt. The company purchases the discharged debt for some small amount, then tries to make him pay it off. He was in the wrong until 2003. They were able to legally collect the debt up until that time, but they chose not to. He could have had a settlement and have his wages garnished. They didn’t do anything until now. He is no longer at fault. Why was he an a$$ about it, because he baited her into comitting a felony by trying to collect a debt after he requested that she prove the debt was owed. The threat of the lawsuit after that is a felony. Much worse than failing to pay $600 almost 8 years ago.
To the guy harassed by this debt collector, after taking note that this debt collection agency is located in PA, I googled for it’s address and surprise, surprise.. it’s located in Scranton. There’s another debt collection agency located in Scranton too. I would not be surprised at all if they were the same company, it’s called NCC. So if you get a call from someone at NCC make sure to play your previous messages for them too.
I can’t go into details on how I know NCC is a debt collection agency, but I will say that their boss is a bipolar sociopath. And his lawyer is all talk, just slap a legal document at his lawyer’s feet and she’ll back off. But you may hear a beeping sound as she does, because she’s a very large women.
@trujunglist:
It’s sad that your view is that most people don’t play fair…. You have a very jaded view of humanity.
@trujunglist: Most collectors have very little or absolutely no knowledge of the laws. Guess what, they’re more like CSRs; straight out of high school, some still in high school! The supervisors make sure to cover some simple basics of the law,
Not my problem. There are laws in place that the collectors must follow. It is the responsibility of the agency to make sure those laws are followed.
@num1skeptic: Since minors can’t sign contracts, the 6-year-olds owe nothing.
Ok the debtor is an asshat, I had to turn off the volume and just read.
The fact he is an asshat in no way gives the collector any leeway. When the validity of the debt is questioned and you can not provide verification that you own the debt, and other necessary information (who, what, where and when) then you have no right to collect the debt. And you have no right to break the law.
@JNighthawk:
From the FDCPA
809. Validation of debts [15 USC 1692g]
[www.ftc.gov]
I got the impression he was making a legal request, in writing, to the debt collector for what he can demand by law when a debt is in contention.
If the debt collector was continuing to call him even after multiple written requests (which were referred to in the call) then the collector was in violation of the law.
A legitimate debt collector can provide written proof and does so. IF they did not provide written verification, then this collector was violating the law and harassing to boot.
There is no “who started it”. This is exactly what the Fair Debt Collection Practices was written for.
@AlisonAshleigh: As to the debt collectors still calling you: It’s illegal for the collectors to call you when they’ve been referred to your lawyer. Take names, explain that you have a lawyer dealing with sorting out the debts, and let them know that each call they make to you since they were notified is considered harassment. People have sued and won over such things, and the states have levied penalties over such behavior.
Pay your debts on time and people won’t lean on you like this. It is pretty simple.
i hope all you people on your high horse experience what its like to not be able to pay your bill on time. its not always a choice. if you really feel that way you should voice it to all your friends all the time. you’ll soon notice some of your friends not wanting to hang out all of a sudden.
if anyone were to come to the economically depressed area i live in and go to any local bar with you pay your bills on time lecture, you wouldn’t make it out alive.
@Indecision:
Absolutely correct ignorance in the law is of no excuse, especially since it is state law that governs a corporation here. He might as well argue that he does not know the speedlimits.
The ironic thing however is that he should have known that most states have adopted the uniform commercial code when dealing with things like negotiable instruments -
As the easily accessible site [www.law.cornell.edu] states -
“Negotiable instruments are mainly governed by state statutory law. Every state has adopted Article 3 of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) ([www.law.cornell.edu]), with some modifications, as the law governing negotiable instruments. The UCC defines a negotiable instrument as an unconditioned writing that promises or orders the payment of a fixed amount of money. Drafts and notes are the two categories of instruments. A draft is an instrument that orders a payment to be made. An example is a check. A note is an instrument that promises that a payment will be made. Certificates of deposit (CD’s) are notes. Drafts and notes are commonly used in business transactions to finance the movement of goods and to secure and distribute loans. To be considered negotiable an instrument must meet the requirements stated in Article 3. Negotiable instruments do not include money, payment orders governed by article 4A (fund transfers) or to securities governed by Article 8 (investment securities).”
In each of the states the consumer can look to the law to figure out what exactly they should have to have proof that a debt was paid (Look through [www.law.cornell.edu])
Generally however, these debts are like (but not the same as I.O.U.) It would do little good if a consumer paid a person claiming that there was an I.O.U. if they neither had proof that the person held the I.O.U. (such as seeing it) or that the I.O. U. was destroyed. Otherwise the “debt collector” is really a scam artist despite what they claim to be and more importantly THE PERSON WHO ACTUALLY HOLDS THE DEBT MAY NOT GET PAID, OR THE DEBTOR WILL PAY TWICE.
@Buran:
Actually that is not generally correct. A minor can enter into a contract, sign a contract, and be liable for a contract, however under a large amount of circumstances the contract is unenforcable. Look to state law and a lawyer to figure out when.
@Thinkertoys-
Nice blathering assumption on your part. No, I am not a bill collector, nor any of the other alias you list.
I’m a guy who in the past has had 34 credit cards put under my SS number- so I’ve dealt with many a debt collector for my fictional “debt” due to identity theft.
I dealt with it. So screw you.
Wait, wait, wait. I don’t get it. This guy charged a bunch of stuff. He decided to stop paying. I don’t see much to indicate that this is somehow a case of fraud or mistaken identity.
Soooo, he’s got a legitimate debt. It gets purchased by a big sleazy company sure, but that makes it ok to steal this money? Sorry? Just because the law is on your side doesn’t mean you’re in the right.
Those collectors were real noobs. If they know they’re getting recorded, they should hire a spin doctor to speak on the phones. Or someone who doesn’t let their emotions get the better of them.
The debt is 7 years old. Providian Visa had PLENTY of opportunity to collect their money. Too bad for them.
Man, I hate telemarketers, and I would probably not like debt collectors either, but the dude making this call sounds like just as much of an asshole.
Are you sure they didn’t intend to sue?
@trujunglist: That’s what the woman said in the audio when he first said, “So are going to sue me”. She says, “I mean in all honesty, probably… I mean for $1500 you’re not one of our higher bills”. He then asks why they sent the letter if they aren’t going to sue. It sounds to me like the “…” was supposed to be “not”.
No, you can’t read what that letter actually says at the beginning but from the conversation it sounds like they threatened to sue them.
Unfortunately, we will probably not get any updates to this story to actually find out the outcome of it because of the serious anti-collections attitude on this site…
1) The audio was not produced by Consumerist. Whether there will be any updates depends on the guy that put this up on YouTube.
2) It’s an anti-abuse and/or anti-illegal attitude.
@Cad06: Sure, let me know when you plan on handing out your endless supply of money.
@PatrickAustin:
1) We don’t know why he stopped paying. Maybe he decided to stop paying and maybe he simply didn’t have the money.
2) We don’t know that the big, sleazy company even purchased the debt. That’s why you ask for verification. Why should he be giving money to someone who doesn’t even own the right to collect the debt?
This guy admitted nothing to this agency except that the last 4 of his SSN = the last 4 of the SSN on record for an account.
So, is he supposed to run around paying off debts for everyone who shares the same last 4?
Technically from my point of view this woman is completly within her boundries. If she was doing thrid party collections then she would be just reckomend to the client she is collecting from to take those actions with there attorney. FDCPA is disgned to not control what you say as a debt collector but how you say it. she did make a mistake though. she shouldnt of called back she should of let him think about what he is doing because it would of been paid 1 way or another. voluntarily on involuntarily. We cant be held accountable becuase we cant say anything that we dont intend on doing. bottom line we do reckomend that you get sued, doesnt mean that our client will sue. just that we reckomend that as a next step. Mr Rock