Capital One MBNA Citibank Bank One Household People's Heritage Bank American General Dell I have been highly advised to avoid BK and CCCS but these are the creditors I owe. Will they use CA's or sue me?
Capital One: two cards, approximately $500 a piece MBNA: two accounts, approximately $1500 a piece Citibank: $2000 Bank One: $1500 Dell: $2300 American General: $825 Household: $600 People's: $2200
The normal course of action is to refer the account to a 3rd party collector. That may very well be a collection agency or it could be an attorney.
MBNA quite often refers their accounts to Wolpoff & Abramson who are attorneys and their normal course of action is quick referral of the account to arbitration which is in most cases little more than a kangaroo court. About the only thing that might possibly work is to catch W&A in violations and then file for arbitration with them as the defendants. This is a bit expensive and may or may not work. If one does happen to get an award the next step would have to be filing for motion for summary judgment against them and forclose on that. Some people have been successful in obtaining arb awards against some creditors and collectors but to the best of my knowledge they made the fatal mistake of sitting on their judgment and waiting to get sued then attempting to go before the court and plead that their award superseded the one before the court and that met with dismal failure.
I've had charge-offs for bank CC's, etc, that I didn't pay off for many years after the fact - never got a judgement against me from them, nor any other legal action. My personal feeling is that it's only a scare tactic - I had about 10k on 5 cards or so, none of the banks or their many CA's ever did anything besides huff and puff for several years. This was about 13 years ago though.. but I have reason to believe not much has changed. I have gotten a judgement against me though, and vacated, but not related to anything involving consumer credit.
I've had charge-offs for bank CC's, etc, that I didn't pay off for many years after the fact - never got a judgement against me from them, nor any other legal action. My personal feeling is that it's only a scare tactic - I had about 10k on 5 cards or so, none of the banks or their many CA's ever did anything besides huff and puff for several years. This was about 13 years ago though.. but I have reason to believe not much has changed. I have gotten a judgement against me though, and vacated, but not related to anything involving consumer credit.
I've had charge-offs for bank CC's, etc, that I didn't pay off for many years after the fact - never got a judgement against me from them, nor any other legal action. My personal feeling is that it's only a scare tactic - I had about 10k on 5 cards or so, none of the banks or their many CA's ever did anything besides huff and puff for several years. This was about 13 years ago though.. but I have reason to believe not much has changed. I have gotten a judgement against me though, and vacated, but not related to anything involving consumer credit.
The economic situation is very different now than it was 13 years ago. In today's economy it is seen as very necessary to pursue all possible options to recover losses from debtors who do not pay. A very large part of this newer economic vision is the loss of jobs and the economic decline we are currently seeing. That was not a prevalent viewpoint 13 years ago. Back then there was not the perception that losses could so easily put them out of business. Now it is seen as being vitally important to their bottom lines. So judgments and legal action is much more likely than it was 13 years ago. For that reason debtors who want to win will need to look at the probability that any debt may very well end up in court. As a result, anyone is now likely to be taken to court rather than just let slide.
I have a CapOne $4k charge-off that has been passed from CA to CA for 5 years. No one has sued for the $$ and now it's beyond SOL. DH has two CapOnes, one $700 and the other $1200, both around 2 years old. They are both still with the OC and they haven't sued for them. Ex was sued for a Citibank debt (less than $2K) in '98 and had wages garnished.
The pertinent question is what do you plan to do about those debts to keep them from ending up as judgments? The past is no predictor of the future in this type of situation.