Short story short: NCO on TU and EXP. 3 accounts totaling about $400, reported over six months ago. No letters or phone calls. I called about two months ago and demanded something in writing. Nothing has been sent. Do I threaten suit for no letter within 5 days of initial communication? Do I ask for validation right now, even though I haven't received anything from them yet? Do I make a PFD proposal? Any advice for dealing with these $hitbags would be appreciated.
If you have seen their entries in your collection report, that's your first communication of the debt. If they haven't sent you the notice within 5 days of that communication as required by the FDCPA, that's a violation and grounds for you to file a law suit. If you want to get their attention for cheap, file an FDCPA lawsuit in small claims court and send them the summons. Total cost, about $35 in my state.
Paperwork is being printed up as we speak. I found their in-state agent for service, and I'll get the ball rolling tomorrow. Thanks.
Question: the small claims paperwork I've been reading drives home the point (several times) that the name of the defendant must be exact, or else the whole deal risks falling through. My CR has "NCO Financial Systems", but the actual business name, as far as I can tell, is "NCO Group". The in-state agent for service is also registered as "NCO Financial Systems". Will the address (a POB in Philadelphia) on my CR suffice as well, or do I need to have the main corporate address on there? Thanks.
have you tried asking for a fax? please dont bite my head off, but i used to work as a collector at NCO. i can admit many collectors there used not so honest methods.anyways i would often have debtors ask me for written proof and i would mostly fax it over myself since head office sends out the letters and is extremely disorganized.if you have a fax number available you should call them asap.if by then the letter is sent out to your satisfaction, you have some options to cut that debt. -ask for a settlement(the collector will try to discourage this for obvious reasons, by saying it marks in your credit that you settled a debt..WRONG! it shows a debt paid in full) -if you are unable to make the full payment you can do a payment plan(even on a settlement) if i was your collector i would have offered you 3 payments of 83.33 if your collector is rude in any way, hang up, call back and ask to speak with a supervisor.chances are they will be suspended(minimum).also supervisors can cut the debt even more and provide even better deals. good luck! p.s. i quit there, i just couldnt ask the single mom with no job to take food off the table for the credit card she couldnt pay....i guess you cant have a heart at that job. but the people i did help were grateful i always worked for the debtor, not the lender!
I'll agree with you that it does show either settled or paid collection most of the time. However that does not make it a positive in the eyes of future lenders. I'll also agree with you that there are people who enter the collections field from time to time that have the same outlook as you but they never seem to stay very long. The result is that the collections industry is left with people who enjoy the work and fall into a rut of abuse of the civil rights of those they contact. If that were not so then there would be no need for this forum and it would have gone dead years ago. There would also be no need for consumer advocacy attorneys and they would all have to earn their money in other areas of practice. If that were not so I would not have had two active consumer advocacy attorneys call me yesterday asking me to help them learn what I know as a result of my participation in other forums. If that were not so then there would be no such thing as more than 28,000 people having to file federal cases against debt collectors and we would have little or no need for such laws as the FDCPA and other consumer protection laws. It is too bad that there are not thousands more people in the debt collection industry such as yourself but those who work in the lower echelons of the collections industry are not so much to be blamed as those whose task it is to properly train them and fail to do so. Government is also partly to blame because they have continually made it increasingly difficult to know, understand and obey their laws. Compliance costs keep on escalating as well. Governmental actions usually cause more problems than they resolve. You say you worked for NCO at one time. They spend millions of dollars a year training their people and that isn't even nearly enough to get the job done. To make matters even worse, while debt collectors might spend millions on training their personnel they often have to hire attorneys who fail to understand the law and end up getting themselves in trouble thereby ruining the good work of those who do their best to be in compliance. Collection industry statistics seem to show that the majority of debt collectors are in compliance and have excellent records so it is the legal industry that is causing more problems than the collection industry. I think that it would be difficult indeed to claim that the legal industry is not the one causing most of the problems we have today. (LOL)
Thanks for your input, mtl85. You're basically confirming what I've already suspected--namely, that the head letter-sending office is in shambles. I won't settle for anything less than a full deletion from my CR. I'll pay the full amount, so I figure that will be easier to leverage. The real point, though, is that I (or any other debtor) should not have to ask, demand, beg (repeatedly) for anything that I am legally entitled to. The FDCPA clearly states what the collection agency is mandated to provide, and the penalties for non-compliance are equally clear. If they can't get their act together and send me a letter, tough for them. Plenty of people get calls/letters from NCO, so it's not like they aren't capable. I'm not going to overlook their errors, since they certainly aren't going to overlook mine. P.S. It's a shame that there aren't more people in the industry who try your approach to dealing with people.
