I sent validation letters to all my CA's about 5 weeks ago. All of course by certified return receipt. My letters requested the validation of the account(s) and also notified the CA that I was formerly requesting not to be contacted by telephone, only by mail. I have had good luck with several of these. Including actually a couple of letters from one or two CA's saying they are basically dropping their collection activity and returning the account(s) to the OC and removing any info they have placed on my reports. A couple got nasty and filed suit though...ouch! So im now fighting two small claims as a result. My question though is; one CA, Brachfield & Associates, have completely ignored the validation letter and the request to cease phone calls to me. They continue to call me daily and even leave voicemails. I have kept records and saved the voicemails and of course I have my return receipt showing that they received my letter. What should I do now? Should I send a "2nd notice" and re-state my validation request and notice to stop phone contact? Or should I nail them with a suit? Or report them to the FTC? Or all of the above?
If you can switch small claims to federal court.Send the second letter and prepare you case against them in federal court.For their many violations.
You have been sued. It's too late to send validation letters. As jjgross said, see if you can remove to federal. If not, you have a tough row to hoe. Read some of the other threads here. In small claims, it's not going to matter if they violated a federal law. It's going to matter if you owe the money. Then they get their judgment. That's why it's important to read and study before you go firing off letters. Sending letters to CAs for debts still in statute can bring all kinds of problems, especially lawsuits.
You definitely don't want to try to move it from small claims to federal. That is dragging their lawsuit against you into federal and you certainly don't want to do that. File your own against them. You have been sued but the attorney is a 3rd party debt collector so send the attorney a DV letter as well if you are still inside the 30 day window. You can send the DV at the same time you send your response, certificate of mailing and demand for admissions which should contain at least 40 demands for admission as a bare minimum. Sixty to ninety would be even better. Cute part about it is that if you send the DV at the same time you send your demand for admissions the lawyer can't respond to them until he complies with the DV letter demand. If he does that constitutes illegal continued collection activity. That gives you an additional cause of action. If they don't respond to the demand for admissions in time then you can move to have all your demands deemed admitted and if the judge grants that they have no case left. It is possible for you to win either way or both ways even.
No no, im sorry, I think I confused everyone. The two CA's that have sued are not what I was asking about...although thanks for the good info regarding that I was just asking about the one CA that has just continued to call even though I submitted in writing that they only contact me by mail.
Did you use the magic words in your letter? "It is inconvenient for me to receive phone calls about this debt at any number at any time." If so, then just keep counting and take 'em to court. (You'd have a slam-dunk of a case). If you said something like "Don't call me, just send mail," then that might be a bit fuzzier but you could still push it through on the "least-sophisticated consumer" angle.
My letter states: "I would also like to request, in writing, that no telephone contact be made by your offices to my home, cellular phone, or to my place of employment. If your offices attempt telephone communication with me, including but not limited to computer generated calls and calls or correspondence sent to or with any third parties, it will be considered harassment and I will have no choice but to file suit. All future communications with me MUST be done in writing and sent to the address noted in this letter by USPS. "
You requested and they ignored your request. Simple. (Who said CA's were polite?) You can consider their phone calls harassment all you want but that doesn't make it so. They are probably thinking, "Go ahead! Sue us! See what it gets you!" That doesn't mean their phone calls are not harassment, either. All I'm saying is that your putting that in a letter doesn't change the legal definition of harassment. Now, the "magic words" I mentioned in my post above ARE in the statute which says they can't call at a time that they know to be inconvenient. If you tell them when that is (via CMRRR), then they know or had reason to know so they can't call you any more without violating the FDCPA. The good news is that you didn't tell them to "cease and desist" or the next letter you get from them might be delivered by the Sherrif.
