Funny, I rarely read here anymore and I happened along this thread. I actually thought to myself "why would I not want to deal with a collection agency?" My old post title actually surprised me. Collection agencies violate the law so much I now welcome wholeheartedly their involvement with my friends' screwed up finances. Their violations give consumers leverage.

To answer the disparaging comments regarding my intelligence, you'll be happy to note I'll be adding a "juris dumbass" degree to my B.B.A, M.S, and M.B.A. I am sadly lacking a formal “B.S.” degree, although I do find it quite helpful to possess a bit of it when negotiating. Never underestimate the “stupid consumer” who just can’t see the correctness of your side and who will still take you to court no matter how many times defendant’s counsel tells you they’ve been to law school, they know more than you do, they pound pro se litigants into the ground, and that they are correct fully in their position, and that their client/company is in complete and total compliance with all laws (all the while they’re writing down your address to send you your settlement agreement and nondisclosure agreement and then later… your settlement check).

I would now title the post "How to make 5k a year suing collection agencies and credit bureaus for fun and profit"... subtitled: “Suing them: if enough consumers actually sued when these companies broke the law, they’d change their business practices and stay within the weak and easy consumer laws because their profit margins would depend upon compliance”…

I will, for the entertainment of those very few who are interested, comment on my original thread:

I can understand the peanut gallery comments on what I wrote about “assignment of debts”. Ignore those please. I’m guessing that’s where the hazing is emanating from in the recent posts to this thread. Certainly someone who has bothered going to law school would not heckle the idea of using the concept of validation as provided by the FDCPA. Sending a letter requesting that is no big deal. Personal injury attorneys do it all the time for their client’s medical bills. I won’t counterattack and discuss the cases I’ve seen presented by a bank’s in-house counsel that consisted of a one page typed note that they typed as the only proof of an account (literally 4 lines: Principle, interest, atty fees, total): no contract, no schedule of payments, no client. Easy default judgments have just become way too prevalent. For that type of legal prowess, anyone could be in-house counsel without bothering with law school.

To better put this thread into context, at the time I originally posted this thread I had just learned about the FDCPA validation requirement and was excited that there was "something", well, “anything” a consumer could request of a rogue collection agency. But, I learned of these strategies from a somewhat "fringe" source. Let's leave it at that. I find it cute that I was extremely excited to find a strategy with which to deal with collection agencies. Certainly there are errors in logic and in law. But, you don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. The initial concepts presented here are off here and there, but the strategy of becoming more offensive instead of defensive, of using the FDCPA and FCRA to the consumer’s advantage, and of taking action instead of waiting until you get sued, are both then and now completely accurate.

Keep in mind, up until this point; most of what I’d read on this board and on others of what to do when dealing with a collection agency could be summarized by the following:

“I keep getting calls from a collection agency. I call back. I get yelled at. I don’t even know anything about this debt. They tell me it’s mine. They cuss at me. They call me 3 times a day. They tell me I’m going to jail. They tell me they’re taking my wages tomorrow. They tell me they don’t need to provide proof of anything. They tell me they’ll dig up my dead husband if I don’t pay his funeral bill” Or something along those lines.

And as for strategies, oh my. Most of us would simply call collection agencies, get beaten up verbally, admit a debt in writing (even when the collection agency likely had NO written proof of the debt whatsoever), try to settle, hope for a deletion on the "word" of the collection agency, get nothing in writing, and wonder oh why lord didn't the collection agency keep its word on the back end and delete the trade line after I just paid 5 times the original amount on a debt they paid .03 on the dollar for in the first place.

From flawed threads like this one, better strategies and even complaints were drafted. Suffice it to say, many people’s credit reports were corrected, and even several credit bureaus and collection agencies were successfully sued using these very strategies (validation, FDCPA violations, FCRA violations). Of course, the board, the knowledge, and the strategies did evolve over time.

I will also state that while these initial letters weren’t perfect, I personally used close variations of them to rid myself of several issues. So while my knowledge might not be as exact as a Harvard Law School graduate, I guess I must have sent them to even dumber people (than I am) who took them seriously and took action to correct my issues with their company.

I stand by the advice that it’s not normally in the consumer’s best interest to talk to a collection agency on the phone. You will likely say the wrong thing and honestly, who needs the stress.

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What would you do if you were certain you would always succeed...