I have been reading this site for several days and have found so much great information. Now I'm looking for a little guidance in my personal situation. I have a debt from child care services through my former employer (former as is I left 6 months ago) For the past week I have been receiving phone calls from a CA on behalf my former employer, which I should mention is also my college alma mater. I am a little shaken right now, but I will try to relate as much as I can so I can get some help! CA person wants me to pay by bank transfer or credit card immediately. I definitely wonâ??t do this. But now heâ??s threatening a subpoena for me to pay. Heâ??s a little vague on what heâ??s subpoenaing me for. Sometimes itâ??s additional fees, sometime itâ??s â??to get me to pay.â? Heâ??s been calling me at work every day for the past week. I asked him to stop calling me at work. He said something to the effect of , â??I will no longer call you at work, but you must call me tomorrow by 9 am with a credit card.â? I have not received anything in writing from this company. I asked for something in writing and he refused! I do owe my former employer the debt. I donâ??t want to get sued. When I leave work, I will call the Comptrollerâ??s office at my former employer and try to work out a payment plan with them. If I donâ??t get the debt paid, I probably wonâ??t be able to access my transcripts, and I am planning to go to grad school next year. Please note this is not a student loan debt. I was not a student when I worked there. I used their campus school/day care for one semester while my daughter was an infant. The debt is about $5000, and one of the reasons I left my previous job was because we couldnâ??t afford the day care anymore. So my questions are: Is calling my previous employer and trying to work with them appropriate? Why wonâ??t these people send me something in writing? Is this the point at which I should send a validation letter? (Even though I acknowledge the debt is from the former employer)? I am afraid of being sued, and I donâ??t want it to come to that. I donâ??t however believe that the only way I can avoid that is by giving some joker my personal financial information over the phone. Can they proceed even if I have nothing in writing from them? What would â??a judgement against meâ? (CA words) entail? What are my other options that perhaps I'm not seeing? Thanks!
Based on my experience I would say call the previous employer to work something out. Tell the person who is calling you he must send in writing, get what information you can from him - Company name etc, and file an FTC complaint Do not give any financial information over the phone, Dont even agree the debt is yours on the phone. They WILL bleed your accounts dry.
First, it sounds like you need to go re-read a lot of the basic introductory information in the sticky threads. Second, it sounds like this CA has committed numerous violations of the FDCPA, most significantly, in threatening to "subpoena" you for unspecified fees. If they want to get a court involved,t ehy need to actually sue you. It's illegal for them to threaten to do something they can't do or don't intend to do. Did they ever send you the "mini-miranda" warning ("You have 30 days to dispute this debt...") Third, you really might want to talk to a lawyer. Otehrwise, you need to get cracking and educate yourself on what CA's may and may not do under the law.
I agree with the above. You are better off working this out with your former employer directly. Once he contacted you, the CA had 5 days to send you a letter notifying you of your rights under FDCPA to dispute the debt, request validation, or request the name and address of the original creditor. That letter should also have said that if you did not dispute it within 30 days, they would assume it was valid. Note that the letter would have said that you had to take those actions in writing, to be effective. They did not send you that letter, violating FDCPA, and they told you they would not send you any written information on the debt, when they had a legal obligation under FDCPA to inform you that you had a right to request such information if you made your request in writing. They thus used their already illegal failure to notify you to further illegally deceive you into thinking you had no right to written validation of the debt. They are further implying they are going to take legal action, which based on his ignorant description of what such legal action might actually entail, he probably has no knowledge one way or the other on. The debt is probably still owned by the school, and your best strategy is to resolve it with the school. If the CA is this dishonest, how do you know the amount in collection is even accurate, or whether they have just added some arbitrary fee they are not legally entitled to, or that any payments you make will be applied as indicated? If in contacting the school, they say you have to work with the CA, I would notify them in writing, CRRR, of the above violations of federal law, and request a bill from them since the CA has refused to send one. If you then get a bill that makes sense, send your check made out to the school, referencing the bill along with a copy of it to indicate how the payment should be applied, directly to the school. If they want to split their payment with the CA, that is their business, but the CA's violations of law may give them a reason to remove them from the picture. Make it worth it for the school to look to its own interests, split off from those of the CA.
Thank you all who replied. I do need to go back and re-read the newbie information. I wrote my post as soon as I got off the phone with this guy and was a little freaked out, to say the least. I *think* I understand how to handle the CA tactics, and how to go about settling my debt, based on what I've read so far. I was definitely in the "yes, but how does this specifically pertain to my case, and are they going to sue me" frame of mind. My immediate concerns are allayed, time to learn more!
CA man claims they sent something in the mail in the beginning of the month. I haven't seen anything, and I open all our mail.
He would claim that whether he did or not. His alternative is admitting that he violated the FDCPA requirement to notify you of your dispute rights in writing within 5 days of first contact. He knows that if he didn't send the FDCPA notice within 5 days of his first call to you, he violated the law. He also knows that without that notice, most consumers would not know they had a right to dispute and request validation, and that they needed to send that request in writing to fit within the wording of FDCPA. They also don't know that they only have 30 days from that first contact letter (which he claims he sent, and you never received) to dispute in writing if they want to best preserve their rights. Most consumers think they can resolve problems by phone, that other people act in good faith and in compliance with the law. That is why he thought he was safe to refuse sending anything in writing. Your request was verbal, not in writing, and he took advantage of that. "He’s been calling me at work every day for the past week. I asked him to stop calling me at work. He said something to the effect of , “I will no longer call you at work, but you must call me tomorrow by 9 am with a credit card.”" Note that under FDCPA you can tell him that you cannot accept his calls at work, and if you do, he must stop calling you at work. He has twisted your entirely legal and enforceable demand into some sort of trade, where he implies that if you don't call him by 9am with a credit card, presumably to pay, he is not obligated to stop calling you at work. Slick response. Well, if you did pay him, obviously he would have no reason to call, but following your request he is now legally required to stop calling you at work, whether you call him or not. Nor should he be threatening to call you at work if you don't call, since that is an action he cannot now legally do. He does not get to add conditions to what the law obligates him to follow. Send a dispute and request for validation letter to him in writing, CRRR, and he must obtain and forward it before he can try to collect again. Include in your letter that to date you have received no written communications on this debt from him. Add that you cannot accept calls at work and that it is inconvenient for you to receive calls at home, so he may only contact you in writing by US mail at your address. I would still contact the school in the mean time, and try to resolve it directly with them.
You should also look at what sort of result you want to achieve in working with the OC, your former employer, so you can effectively negotiate toward an acceptable agreement (presumably some payment schedule) as part of negotiating to get the debt pulled back from the CA, if that is your goal. If none of this works, particularly if you continue to get calls at work where they might impact your job performance or employer's perception of it, contact an attorney. For $5000, it probably does make it worth it for either the school, or this or another CA to which this debt is either sold or assigned, to consider suing. By the way, how do you run up $5000 debt over an extended period of time, without getting your day care (or any other service) cut off? Is this amount accurate?
That's another violation. If they call you again, tell them you do not wish to have any phone conversations about this account, and that they need to put everything in writing.
Child care expenses through the college are charged in one lump sum. It was originally closer to $9000 for summer and fall. We had been paying it down, but by October, it was apparent it would cost us less if I worked closer to home and found quality child care closer to home. I also had a 40 mile commute round trip, which was tough on my baby, my car, and the rest of the family, as I got home around 6 pm each day. There is very little in the way of affordable quality child care around the college (around the country!). So I found a new job and new child care within walking distance of our house, but we still had the bill, plus the new child care expenses that we pay each week. All told we did save money and headache, but there's the old debt looming over us. ETA: I left my job for the new on when the semester was over. In my original post I said it was for one semester, totally forgetting that it was for summer and fall. The relevence of this is that we did have a history of paying the debt before I left me job, and (personally), holy smokes, my dd is already toddler! Gosh how time flies!
Was this for services actually provided, or was it billed in advance, and you move on, not using the full services you had now been billed for?
It was billed in advance and used til the very end, save maybe half a day. I don't deny we owe my previous employer for the service and I intend to pay *them*, just not the rabid pit bull CA they've hired.
Assuming the alleged debt of $5000 is approximately correct, how long do you expect it will take you to pay this off?
Most likely I need to pay it back by June 2007 if they're holding my transcripts. I money in savings that would pay it off, I could borrow some from my folks, who had initially said they'd help us pay it in the first place, but helped significantly less than they had originally agreed to. Our income is pretty much spoken for with mortgage, kids, food, and utilities. We have no car payments, and dh has a CC that he pays for. We live lean. So I guess there goes my savings, and it could be paid off by the end of the month.
Based on the behavior of the CA, you are still probably better off paying off the school directly. The sequence of illegal behavior does not instill trust in either the accuracy of the alleged debt, or in whether any payment will be properly credited.
Thank you. I don't mind withdrawing from savings to deal with this. We can't afford to pay it off over time, and that's what rainy day funds are for anyway. Lesson learned. It was a debt we were willing to take on, it was worth it, and I'm willing to pay off. Just not to a CA. I will notify the college that the CA they hired really sucks!
