I was wondering if any had any advice on this situation. 3 years ago I went to the Brick with my girlfriend at the time and we both signed an application for a brick card credit application. I asked them if this form obligated me to anything, they said no it's only a check to see how much credit the two of you can get to see what you may be able to buy. We signed the form he told us we could get around 3000$ and did we want to start a brick account, i SAID NO. We left the store and two weeks afterward we broke up. 9 months later I get a bill from the Brick/HSBC that i owe them 3000$ for furniture chared in my and my EX's name. The billing address was my address and the furnitire had been sent to where ever she was staying. The bick could not explain to me how she got credit cards with my name on it only that I signed a form making it legal, which I reminded them was a credit check and I did not agree to an account nor had I recieved cards or any inforamtion telling me I had activated an account. They told me they had sent out the cards shortly before the ex had left my premisis. I told them to re-possess the furniture as I would not be paying for a purchase I did not have in my possession, did not pay for, from an account I didn't know I had. They said they filed fraud claims....which never meterialized becasue they say I signed the form in the beginnign for the Brick card. I contacted the Police who gave me the same awnser and told me it was legal for her to use my address which she haden't resided in in over 9 months and no fraud was committed? I threated to sue her so she went to HSBC (group that financed the loan for the Brick) and she tried to get approved for 3000 dollars to transfer this debt to her and acknowledged is was her purchase and she would pay for it, she acknowledged this to myself, the Brick and HSBC. The application was denied due to her poor credit and the understanding was she would make payments. This never happened and HSBC soon started calling me again. I told them once again I was not paying for this purchase and they can repossess the furniture and they again said they would file fraud claims. 2 years later they have started calling me again and im sick of it. What can I do? I did not make this purchase or ever recieve a Brick card or any information other than a bill. According to them this is a joint account and we are both liable.....how can I be held liable if I had nothing to do with it, second if I do pay it do I get the furniture in question? I wont be paying for nothing thats for sure. They also threaten to damage my credit...but I would think after 2-3 years they would have done so, since then I got apporved on my own for a house and a car, my credit has always been good and I have always been responcible with it and made payments on time etc. In a nutshell I am being billed for an account and being told im the primary card holder on an account I didn't know I had the an irresponcbile Ex maxed out and is not paying back.
t Well, you have at least two options. One is to file a lawsuit against the ex-GF. I'm sure that on the surface of it that may sound like a zany idea but it does have it's merits. Since the amount in question is so small your case would probably fall in small claims courts and you don't need a lawyer for that. All you have to do is properly prepare your case and file it then go argue your case if she does respond which is unlikely and you have your judgment. Then wait about 30 days and go for an assets hearing and garnish her wages or whatever else you can. Maybe she might actually start paying upon getting served by the sheriff. That happened to me about two weeks ago. I went to a garage sale and bought a flat screen monitor for $20. It didn't have a power supply with it but I spent about an hour looking at all the goodies on the property and talking to the owner about computer stuff. He gave me his home address and phone number so I was pretty confident that if he said the monitor was a good one then it probably was. Next day I took it to a computer shop to have a power supply put on it. The shop owner went to a storage room and brought out a used one he thought would work. The monitor required a 12 volt supply at 2 amps and the unit he plugged in was a 24 volt unit rated at 1 amp. My monitor instantly went up in smoke. I asked him what he was going to do about it and he asked me what I paid for it. I told him he didn't have to pay for it, all I wanted him to do was replace it with another unit of equal value. He said he wasn't willing to do that and wanted to know how much I paid for it. He had several monitors of equal value and size on his shelf and he wanted $75 for any one of them so I told him I paid $75 for it. He said he wasn't going to pay that much for mine either. I replied that we would see about that soon enough and I took my old monitor and left the store. I went home and typed up a small claims case against him which when all was said and done amounted to $348.00. Once again I offered to settle the claim for another monitor of equal value. Then I took it down to his store and scotch taped the case to his door then went to the post office and mailed him a copy certified mail. I gave him 5 days to decide whether he wanted to settle or go to court. He was on the phone next day telling me to come get my replacement monitor. Seems he didn't like the prospect of getting sued too well. If I had simply sent hiim a letter telling him I was going to sue him I'm sure he would have just chunked it in the trash but what I sent him was a full blown case complete with case cites, notice of hearing and certificate of mailing. When he saw that he knew I wasn't bluffing and I didn't need any lawyers to help me do it so he knew he was going to be between a rock and a hard place if he didn't comply with my demands. I wasn't demanding anything unreasonable and I got what I wanted. You can do the same thing to your ex GF. No problem. So that's one option. The other option is to wait till they send it to a debt collector then go after the debt collector in court and force the debt collector to pay you to go away and leave them alone. No problem doing that either but you would have to take it to federal court. No problem there either. Just takes you a while longer to do the paperwork and the filing fee is at least double what it would be for your small claims court case. Of course, there is also a 3rd option which is to just give up and pay the debt and go on with life which you have already said you don't intend to do. If I were in your situation I would take the GF to small claims court then start building a case against the debt collector and when I got my first letter from a lawyer I'd instantly file a federal case against the debt collector and then start building a federal case against the lawyer as well. Now that's the way I would go after such a situation as you describe. You will have to decide what you are going to do in your case.
Any help would be great how can he sue the debt collector? is this only for this type of instance or is this an option for other types of situations? Please xplain.
Debt collectors and debt collection lawyers constantly violate federal laws. They can be sued in federal court for those violations. Matter of fact, they can be sued in any court but it just works better in federal court. The trick to getting the job done is educating yourself about all the ways the laws can be broken. Most of those ways are easily found on line but one must be very careful where they get their information. There are probably more web sites and blogs and forums out there giving out false and misleading information than there are those who are giving out valid information. Even web sites and blogs written by high profile lawyers are giving out bad information from time to time. Please take special note of my having said FROM TIME TO TIME. That's the way it is with all the web sources you will ever find including this one. Most of their information and ideas might not only be valid and maybe even great but the problem is that it is human to err and no matter how good we might be we are going to make mistakes FROM TIME TO TIME. I'm certainly no exception to that rule either. We all sometimes resemble Bubba who wanted to follow in the footsteps of his father, his grandfather and his great grandfather who had all walked across the lake to the bar on their 21st birthday to get their first legal drink of beer. Bubba turned 21 and he and his friend Billy Bob jumped into the family rowboat and started off across the big lake. About halfway across Bubba decided he should be able to walk the rest of the way so he stepped out of the boat and nearly drowned but Billy Bob finally got him back into the boat. Disappointed and visibly upset they went back home and Bubba tearfully asked grandma why his father, grandfather and great grandfather had successfuly walked across the lake on their 21st birthdays but he nearly drowned trying to do the same. Grandma laughed and told Bubba they were all born in January but he was born in July and that is why they made it and Bubba nearly drowned. Just one little mistake nearly killed Bubba. LOL So what to do about the fact that everybody makes mistakes from time to time? The first and maybe most important rule is never believe what anybody tells you or you read on any message system until you have done your own research and found out the real truth for yourself. The only reliable resources are those web sites that are actual court or government owned and operated for the most part. Actual court web sites that have case reference information and judicial opinions and commentary by the judges And actual government web sites. In time you can gain sufficient knowledge and skills to be able to sort out the chaff from the wheat and have a fairly good instinct for what is valid information and what is not. But you will never get to the point where you no longer need to do your own research. I have both the FCRA and the FDCPA annotated in my files somewhere. I'm doing a search for them as we speak and when I find them I'm going to post them in Google Docs and make them available on Google Docs through my Google Doc's links page which you can access through my signature line. That may take a day or two because I have to search through a network of 7 computers and a big server system. That means searching through 22 hard drives and some of them are 1 terrabyte drives. That usually takes a while.
