on the verge of going to a CA from OC

One of the best strategies is to pay off your debts to the original creditors if at all possible. Once that becomes obviously impossible then you have no other choice but to go for the second best plan which is to do what more and more people are doing which is to go the informal bankruptcy route.

Informal bankruptcy has none of the drawbacks that formal bankruptcy has. Informal bankruptcy is much less expensive, leaves no public record and those using it end up with a much better credit rating.

 

I guess that if you want to waste $5+ per credit card company in order to get back a reply saying that they aren't subject to FDCPA you can do that. (LOL)

Otherwise wait till a debt collector starts contacting you to send out your validation letters. That's what I would do.

 

Is there a blog post or something on the "informal bankruptcy" you're talking about.

As I understand it, it amounts to just stopping paying your bills and then wait for what may come. Some creditors may just give up, some debts may be sold to CAs, some may take you to court, etc. Regardless, in 7 years, all this will fall off your credit report (judgments notwithstanding, of course).

The good news is that you don't have a BK7 on your credit report for the next 10 years and you didn't have to pay a few thousand dollars to zero out the eligible debts. The bad news is you have to deal with the collectors, lawsuits, etc. that might follow. For some, this might be seen as an opportunity to file FDCPA lawsuits for others this might be seen as an even bigger nightmare.

Is this close? Is there more?

 

As usual, look in the left hand column on my links page and you will find a link to the article where the topic is dealt with. There is usually also a link to the story on the main page as well.

Quite so. Something is going to happen every time if you consider nothing to be something. (LOL)

If nobody including the consumer does anything then that would be true.

No, that's the good news, not the bad news.

Only to those who choose to be ignorant, lazy or downright stupid. For those who choose to educate themselves and do a little bit of work and study it is fun and even extremely profitable. But then, life's like that isn't it?

Yes, but close don't count except in horseshoes and hand grenades.

There is always more. For instance, a friend of mine went to court yesterday. Seems a debt collector took him to small claims court over a $4,000 debt. My friend is not all that good at expressing himself and often rambles quite a bit but he had his act together fairly well yesterday and pointed out that the debt collector (an out of state corporation) could not sue Pro Se. He also pointed out that the corporation was not domesticated into his state, loaned no money to anyone in his state, owned no property within the state and held no in state liens and that was another reason the plaintiff had no standing to sue. My friend also pointed out that the plaintiff had failed to follow the rules of procedure and had also violated FDCPA by illegally continuing collection attempts after demand for validation had been upon them.

The judge granted summary judgment to my friend. The debt collector had driven over 300 miles multiple times trying to get judgment. My friend can't even spell good but that didn't matter either. Now he will file a federal case against the debt collector and he will win that too.

The audio of his telephone call to me is on my links page just so people know that it can be done. It is a very short audio because I shortened it down to just the bare essentials. Also took out all of his very vulgar profanity which he uses a great deal of. His name is Vance and the link is the last one in the sidebar on the left side of the page. Enjoy.

 

Not all creditors should be handled the same way. It depends on if you have funds to settle, how delinquent to accounts are, who you have for creditor.