CA came back with "Validation"

What references to the FDCPA?

Are you trying to get this to be a FDCPA case so jurisdiction is in your state? What if it is not, because it is not a consumer debt, due to property being rental property? You may have to file suit in his state, and he may be depending on you not wanting to due to the cost from your not being there anymore.

Do you still own the property? Or can you show the work was not done, by a simple photograph? Do you have a copy of your complaint to the AG?

Does the AG's office indicate they are actively pursuing this case, for contracting without a license, or are you just hoping they do?

 

Frankly I do not see why you do not raise the key issues up front, particularly if you would have to raise them in court if it later went there. Otherwise, the CA can claim they had no knowledge of your dispute, and you are just trying to dredge up issues to avoid paying for his wonderful work. The illegal contractor already knows he is billing for work not done, but if you don't put the CA on notice, you basically let them off the hook.

Something along these lines frames the issues as a matter of illegal contracting, public safety, settlement, and no legitimate remaining debt:

1) Unlicensed contractor offered to do a contracting job for the amount of $xxx, and represented that he was qualified to do that job.

2) His representation that he was qualified was deceptive since he did not hold a contractor's license, as required by AZ law for this kind and dollar amount of work. This is a violation of AZ Business and Professions code ....(or whatever), which requires that contractors must hold a valid contractor's license in order to legally accept jobs over $xxx.
(Quoting and accepting a job that requires an AZ contractor's license, without holding one, is illegal. That undermines his right to hold you to the resulting "contract", as that would be contrary to public policy.)

3) He failed to complete the job, and performed parts in a substandard manner and in violation of code. The remainder of the job had to be completed by others, and some of his work had to be redone to ensure safety of tenants, and in order to conform to code (if this is the case). Since it has become apparent that he is unlicensed, and that his original representation was deceptive, he has no legal remedy to complete the job.
(In order to mitigate losses, and meet his responsibilities for the safety of his tenants, and his obligations to his insurance company, client could not allow illegal contractor to perform any additional work.)

4) Despite his failure to complete the job to accepted standards, I presented an equitable offer to pay for work already completed. He accepted your offer, and cashed your check in accordance with that offer.
(offer, acceptance, consideration: you have a contract)

5) Despite his acceptance of your settlement offer, he is now attempting to collect fraudulently for work not performed, and for a debt not owed.
(Billing for the full amount of a job which was not completed, is fraudulent. Billing for any amount beyond accepted settlement is a breach of that agreement.)

6) I have filed a complaint with the AZ AG's office regarding this matter.
(It is better to make this a fait accompli, not hold it as a threat to force a settlement. Ethically, you file complaints both to obtain a settlement of your own dispute, and as a public duty to report illegal behavior. Settling with you does not remove the ethical responsibility to report an unlicensed contractor who may cause further damage to others.)

Since you still own the property in AZ, what is to stop him from suing you in AZ? Nothing, except that he probably still doesn't want this in court, for the reasons above.

I am not an attorney. I think that people should meet their obligations, including compliance with the law.

 

As long as you just dispute the debt with the CA, and they send you almost anything from the OC in response to your dispute, and you leave it at that, they have probably met their obligations under FDCPA as they claim.

You may want to frame their continued collection, including any negative CR TL, as either misrepresenting the legal status of a debt (supported by your settlement offer, and cashed check, which refutes the OC's bill), or as a continuation of the OC's illegal contracting, with the CA acting as OC's agent, possibly making them jointly responsible under AZ law. That would then support both sanctions by AZ, and FDCPA violations if they continue.

To do that, they need to be provably on notice of both the settlement offer and acceptance/payment, and that the OC was acting as an illegal contractor.

If it goes to court, their position is that they are just collecting on another unpaid bill, and they forwarded information from OC, as required by FDCPA. It is hard to hold them liable if you let them assume the OC's bill is legal.

 

Unfortunately, there is not enough wrong with a CA attempting to collect on the wrong amount. Even reporting erroneously is not actionable until you dispute via CRA. There is, however, plenty wrong with an unlicensed contractor attempting to bill for work not done. That is why those license laws exist, to maintain minimum standards of competence and performance.

You want their actions to be wrong on their face, but until you call their bluff, they get to do whatever you let them.

Look at how it might eventually have to play out in court. You appear strongest when your claims are direct, up front, honest, documented, timely, etc., and you can show they were aware and their actions were blatant and willfull. Separate from issues of law, a judge looks at a case, where both parties say different things, and has to decide who is telling the truth.

You document your case, you show you notified the parties from the beginning, you file and document regulatory complaints where appropriate, and the FAX harassment, absence of contractor's license, incompleted job, cashed check on a settlement offer all give one consistent picture of what happened that also makes their claim not credible. The settlement offer and cashed check alone is enough to hang a decision on, wiping away all the other issues as irrelevant.

You muddy the water, act too clever, and you make their claims more credible. If absense contracting license and substandard/uncompleted work is part of the basis for your dispute, make sure your complaint has been filed, in writing, or any court might ask why you are bringing it up now.

 

You are still viewing it as a consumer debt collection issue resolvable by the CA sending you documents from the OC. He could make up and send you documents all day long and it would not prove it to your satisfaction, nor would it ever address the reasons why the debt in collection is not valid.

The debt is not valid because of the reasons numbered above. Another vague "bill" from OC, which does not refute contractor's failure to complete the job, and does not refute your documentation of his acceptance of a settlement, also does not "validate" the debt.

The claim that you have been misidentified is also boilerplate intended for other purposes. Since you are proveably the owner of the property where the work was done, why assert something that can be easily disproved, and shown to be frivolous?

 

If at this point the OC, and CA, have enough of your name and address to send you bills and validation, they also have enough to put it on your credit report.

 

From what you have said, your case is not one to be resolved by providing or not providing "documents". You have a bill, the CA has a bill, the problem is that it includes charges for work not done, that a non-licensed contractor could not legally bid on or accept, and that you also claim to have reached a settlement.

None of those are issues to be resolved by a dispute process thru a CRA. They would only confirm that any TL on a CR is as directed by the CA. It is not even clear that litigation with the CA alone over a fraudulent bill produced by the OC would result in anything other than the CA removing any associated CR entry.

Disputing thru a CRA does not result in any documents from the OC or CA being sent thru the CRA to you. Indeed, even if that happened, what other documents would there be other than the bill the CA already sent? All they would check, if even that, is that you are the right you, and the bill is from the OC to you.

The usual consumer debt disputes are for old charged off revolving accounts, where determining the amount owed may require accounting for all charges and payments, and verifying that the interest and fees are consistent with the original contract or later amendments.

Even then, the original signed contract may not be needed to establish that there is an agreement, since each signed charge slip, and each statement with a payment shows that both parties considered a contract to be in force.

Since this is for work on rental property, some of the consumer protections, which apply to consumer debt, may not even apply.

You have a dispute over a single job. The likely documents might include an original bid or estimate (which would support what was originally agreed to, as well as what the contractor represented he was competent and legally licensed to perform), a final bill (representing what the contractor claimed had been done and what he claimed was owed), any payment checks, possibly bills for materials to substantiate that expenditures for supplies were made on the job, your settlement offer and cashed payment check (to support your claim that the debt is settled, and on what terms), etc.

You can also support that claimed work has not been done as of a certain date, in the manner common to construction where such issues often come up requiring a contractor to be kicked off the job for failing to perform in a timely manner, by taking a polaroid picture of someone holding today's newspaper standing in front of the site, and saving the visible front page to establish the state of completion on that date.

To reach a final resolution, you need to go after the OC. Possible dispute issues include billing fraud, breach of contract, work not to code or substandard, unlicensed contracting, deception and other unfair trade practices, and even harassment (the FAXes) (provided you don't harass back).

For the amount of money involved, the next question is how to do this in an economical manner, or get compensated if they drag it out.

 

You may want to go against the CA, but all that may accomplish is get it passed back to the OC, or on to another CA. You get a judgement against OC, with the debt declared invalid based on your settlement agreement, and any CA he passes it to gets caught for misrepresenting the legal status of the debt. How does lack of AZ license interfere with CA collecting on you in Cal?

 

Your settlement offer letter and his cashed payment check are NOT just you saying what he agreed to.

It presumably shows his endorsement, and that the payment went into his account, and your reference to the settlement terms in your letter, on the check. That undermines their claim the debt can be assumed valid based on OC's bill and "validation", and undermines their defense against FDCPA violations for misrepresenting the legal status of the debt.

Furthermore, your settlement offer, and his signing of the payment/acceptance check, are closer to pinning down an agreement in writing with an indication that both parties agreed, than any sloppy estimate or bill produced by only one party whether earlier, or later.


It shifts the burden of proof. It sets them up, in a manner where they know they are set up.

"Yes, but, uh, the whole idea of the Doomsday Machine is lost... if you keep it a secret! " - Dr. Strangelove.

 

They CAN choose to do anything. But what is it worth it to them? This isn't a major account, and they have other business to pursue. If the debt isn't legal, or is likely to be not legal, there is nothing but downside risk in it for them. They would not pursue it, and they would not want their TL on your CR to allow you to pursue them. I think your other CAs give you the likely perspective of this one.

There are situations where if you send a settlement offer, along with a check, and the creditor cashes it, the settlement is not binding. The details apparently depend on state law, and are typically when you send such an offer and check to, say, a creditor's payment processing center, which in fact may even be a third party. You can see how the creditor would claim that no binding contract was created by an offer to some clerk clearly not authorized to bind the creditor. Clerks process payments, and are not owners or legal departments.

Some state laws provide for designating a specific address, separate from the normal payment address, to which such offers must be sent for them to be binding if the check is cashed. You can see the reasoning, when you consider what makes a contract.

If in this case, the offer was sent directly to the contractor, he personally saw it, signed the check and cashed it, it would be hard to argue a contract was not formed.

I would outline the full situation as numbered above, including the fact that the job was not completed, the contractor was not licensed when required by AZ law, and whatever else applies, and include a copy of the settlement offer, and a copy of the cashed check. I would conclude in my letter that because of the settlement agreement between you and the contractor, no debt is outstanding, and their continued collection is illegal under FDCPA. Send it CRRR, and assume it will get back to the contractor. In fact, send a copy to the contractor, CRRR.

Do not put in your letter anything that you would have a problem supporting in court.

You draw your line in the sand, and if the other side crosses it, you have to act. They should not be surprised, since the line was evident. If you avoid drawing such a line, they are free to snipe forever. It is when the line is vague, that one party is likely to go too far, leading to expensive legal exercises that might have been avoided. Just ask Saddam.

The CA will likely want no part of this. The contractor now has a choice of whether to drop it, or sue, knowing what he will be dealing with, since you would likely have counterclaims should he ignore the benefit to him of acknowledging your settlement agreement.

You have acted in good faith, he has not. You then made a settlement offer, in good faith, to extricate him from the job, he accepted it, took your payment, and then failed to honor it. You have not muddied your position should you later need to go to court. Add a dated picture showing the job was not finished, with his lack of license and a complaint filed, and you have a black and white picture.

 

If you draw your line clearly, his legitimate choices are to sue or move on. It is clear to him that sending the "debt" to another CA will likely result in it being bounced back, and that selling the "debt" would make an unhappy buyer. Other actions, whether sending obscene faxes, or sending the debt to other CAs, do not refute your claimed settlement, and instead appear to be harassment.

If he is nuts, and chooses harassment, vandalism, or whatever, that is a criminal matter. No claimed debt is a defense.