Hi Everyone I was wandering if any help could be obtained for someone living in Canada? I have a debt with Amex of about $1900. After an unexpected medical retirement I contacted Amex and told them I would pay but that the account would be late. This was a total waste of time, they passed it to a collection company. I have refused to talk to the person calling as long as he was recording the conversation. Now I am mad! Over $1,000,000 charged on the card and they could not extend any consideration. By my calculations even if they made a mistake of $5 a month over 20 years at compounded interest at %19 they owe me money. So here is the problem; I saw Marie's posting, does it apply in Canada? Can I send 3 letters etc? They have turned over my bonus points to Guido and Associates to keep. 50,000 of them. Now I want to drag this out and make it as hard as possible for them to get their money. Is it too late to demand all the prior receipts, bills, proof of purchase etc? Can this be done in a court of law or is there some filing that can be done to force them to comply with proof? I know this seems childish, but so what. As far as I can see Amex has no consideration for me, and I owe these bill collectors even less. Amex has not sent me any document that transfers the debt to these loosers. Sorry... for the ire. Well, here is hoping. I need to start somewhere; I just got a letter from some barrister stating they are representing Guido and Vinnie in this case.
Foreign CA's collecting on US accounts are required to comply with the Fair Debts Collection Practices Act. There is an FDCPA Opinion on the FTC web site which is addressed to a CA in Saipan, where the FTC essentially says, since the courts consider you to be a collection agency, you are a collection agency, and have to comply with the Fair Debts Collection Practices Act. Berger Opinion http://www.ftc.gov/os/statutes/fdcpa/letters/berger.htm
For a Canadian resident, you would have to find out about Canada's own laws, I would hope that they would have their own version of the FDCPA, but I wouldn't know where to look for it.
The bolded part is, IMHO, the most important part of the thread. I suggest you do a search in CN looking for a thread I started entitled "Making Yourself Judgemnent proof". Since US judgement enforcement procedures were inherited from Merrie Olde England after our 1775-1783 temper tantrum, one can safely assume taht Canada's are also of English origin and the two are probably similar. If you can't find the thread, do to www.artofcredit.com and look in Essentials for my thread "Aggressive Credit Repair". The Judgement proofing thread is there too. The gist is this - since you no longer have a garnisheeable job, it shouldn't be too hard to make the rest of your attachable assets disappear so that Amex CA won't have such an easy time. Once you are judgement proof, you can play them like a fish until teh Statute of Limitations (in whichever Province you live) has expired.
Hi, Thank you for the helpful suggestions. I have found a government site that lists some of the practices in Canada and they are very close to the US. I will call someone tomorrow in the office of Debt Management (not sure what that is, but this is where I have been referred to). From this call I will ask about the letters of dispute and so on. I will let everyone know how it goes. This is a start thank you.
