Cap One busted in Boise Idaho

Have you noticed the mini miranda is missing from the offers to open new cards to cancel out old debt??? Have some if you need them for exhibits, lol.

 

It is very deceptive...they make it look like a great offer...but it screws you even more. Too late to join suit???? They are in a bit of trouble. I have more info from an insider at cap1. Troll alert, though. No where on any of the media they send in these offers does it have the mm. Get 'em!

 

How do they know who is involved as far as who are parties to the suit? I mean, if crap1 loses, how will all of the plaintiffs be notified?

Keep me posted on court dates, etc.

 

I don't know how your case will be set up but in a huge number of such cases the plaintiffs must all have been injured within the last year commencing from some date such as the date of the filing of the suit or its having been certified as a class action suit or whatever the criteria is.

Furthermore, it is often settled by them performing some act of contrition, maybe paying all the attorney fees and maybe not and the plaintiffs get little or nothing and sometimes end up having to pay the attorney fees among themselves, sometimes having to rake up some fairly heavy bucks just to get out of the damned thing.

Class Actions are usually a good thing to stay as far away from as possible.

 

Like you, I think the idea of standing up for what is right is the only way to go. In fact that is the main reason I advocate the methods I do. Teach the clowns to obey the law and treat people decently no matter what it takes to get the job done.

Figuratively speaking, far too many people seem to enjoy being the victim lying on the ground with the blows raining down on them and the video cameras rolling away.

To me, getting rid of the debts and making the perps eat the debts they were trying to collect is nothing more than simple justice IF they break the law and violate people's rights in the process.

Go get em!

 

kalinka,

I don't quite see how that argument can stick. While some of these debts may be beyond the SOL, it doesn't prevent the debtor from paying off those debts if they so wish.

The catch will be that the FDCPA & FCRA don't specify, to my knowledge, that Cap1 has to volunteer to the debtor that the debt is past SOL.

With the likes of MBNA feeling the sting of reduced revenues from their credit markets, Cap1 is using this alternative to cross-sell and upsell people who otherwise might not have another recourse to rebuild their credit.

 

Rina:

I have to concurr with your admonishment on that one.

I also tend to agree with Kalina's views that what they are doing is awfully shady practice on the part of Cap1. Gulf States is right in bed with them on that little scam too. They come up claiming that a debt is due and they are collecting and offer a "neat" way to take care of the problem by providing you with a cap1 credit card preloaded with the debt.

And in the process they don't even give you a way to dispute because there is no address for Gulf States on it, no miranda no notice of it being a debt collector, nothing. Just the offer of the new credit card with the debt preloaded and that is where you can nail them even if it does take a bit of research to do the job.

I guess they think that because they didn't make any actual demand of payment but rather made an offer that that makes them exempt from the law.

I don't think so but thats just my opinion.

And although I don't have it "on record" as being fact I can just imagine that if you already have a cap 1 card they will load it with the debt and drive the old card into overlimit fees and that one ends up going down the tubes too.

 

kalinka,

I agree about the slimy approach, but if you look at it from a business standpoint, they're no different than strictly subprime lenders who innundate you with application, processing, acceptance, membership & other arbitrary fees in order to help you build your credit.

Whereas you don't know for sure if a CC lender such as the above would definitely approve you, Cap1 could successfully justify this blended strategy that allows you to clear up an old debt, and get a "clean" slate in one transaction. So not only could they piggyback on the law(s) that allow(s) the first situation, but they can also appeal to the existing practice of buying old debts for pennies on the dollar.

Yesterday NPR had a program on "Debt collectors gone bad." The NCO spokesman/director said their 9,000+ CSRs are trained in legal & professional methods to encourage debtors to pay up, but he admitted that abuse can occur. He said if a consumer complains they were "abused," he tends to believe the customer. In such a case the CSR is reprimanded, even terminated.

The problem with consumer laws is that their scope cannot be too broad, otherwise not enough legislators will support it. Hope you have a good lawyer that can prove Cap1 is violating, if nothing else, at least the spirit of the law.

 

It is already pretty well at that point or beyond.

Thats for sure.

 

That is a hoot for sure. NPR probably picked on him because he just happens to head the largest collector in the world. Nothing like getting the biggest and one of the worst of them to shower the gullible and unsuspecting public with all manner of platitudes, beatitudes and whatever other garbage.

It's called "public relations" by one and propaganda by those who really understand what it is.

Propaganda is what the government claimed the Nazis were trying to lay on us back when.
They even had a Minister of propaganda who was a part of the German War Office. They laid it on thick and heavy in order to destroy the moral of our troops.

So now they put the NCO Minister of Propaganda on NPR and let his spew his propaganda upon the troops, errrrrrrrrr consumers.

Times ain't changed all that much in reality. (LOL)

NCO is the largest collection agency in the world and they could care less about the consumer or their rights in reality. They pay lip service to the law and that is about it. They are one of the worst abusers out there although there are others that are worse.

 

Now lets look at the real story instead of some propaganda minister from NCO.

Debtor abuse
> Collectors' harassment growing worse, critics say
> By Andrea Coombes, CBS MarketWatch.com
> Last Update: 12:02 AM ET Feb. 20, 2003
>
>
> SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- Angela McGuire Pike
> discovered too late how some lenders employ scare
> tactics as intimidating as a loan-shark's shakedown
> crew in demanding overdue payments.
>
> After falling behind on some payday-advance loans,
> Pike and her husband, Richard, sought to make
> arrangements with their 10 creditors to get more time
> to pay off. But two lenders wouldn't agree to the
> plan, and the phone assault and harassment began
> quickly thereafter.
>
> Collection agents called the couple "thieves" and
> accused them of "going all over town writing hot
> checks," said Pike, a 28-year-old stay-at-home mother
> of two preschoolers who's studying to become a
> teacher. "One said, 'It's my intention to prosecute
> you.'
>
> "I became very scared. His tone makes you feel
> horrible," said Pike, whose sole support is her
> husband's $24,000 annual income as a welder. "You feel
> horrible enough as it is. You owe money and you want
> to make it right."
>
> Another debt collector telephoned Richard Pike's
> mother and the couple's friends demanding to know
> where they were, even though the Pikes returned phone
> calls. One collector sent a fax to Richard Pike's
> employer, demanding wage information.
>
> It was illegal for the collector to contact the Pikes'
> friends, family and employer because the couple didn't
> try to hide and told the collector that the employer
> didn't allow such contact. See full story on
> borrowers' legal rights.
>
> Despite the law, debt collectors' harassment of
> borrowers is an all-too-common situation, according to
> the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC), a
> consumer-advocacy group that is compiling evidence of
> illegal debt-collection efforts to stem the practice.
>
> While the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act
> restricts bill collectors' behavior, many cross the
> line in an effort to collect commissions on billions
> of dollars of delinquent consumer debt.
>
> 'Persistence breaks resistance'
>
> "An expression in collections is 'persistence breaks
> resistance,'" said Michael Flannagan, a former debt
> collector who worked at various agencies for almost 13
> years. "You keep hammering them. Even if they say they
> can't pay on Monday, you call them on Wednesday, call
> them on Friday, keep calling them until they
> eventually break."
>
> And the longer it takes to collect the debt, the
> harsher the tactics get, Flannagan said. "Each call
> would progressively gets worse ... to the point where
> you have to break the law by telling them 'You're
> going to get sued, you're wages are going to get
> garnished.'
>
> "If it was an immigrant, we'd say they'd get deported.
> We'd say 'La Migra' (immigration) over and over and
> over. You would intimidate them that way. You'd push
> the rules as far as you were allowed to, and if that
> didn't work you'd push harder."
>
> The prevalence of abuse at the 6,500 third-party
> collection agencies in the U.S. is unclear, though the
> number of consumers harassed appears to be rising as
> the economy struggles to recover and laid-off and
> under-employed workers find it harder to pay, experts
> said.
>
> Some say the problem is limited to a few misguided
> collectors.
>
> "There are a handful of agencies that are unethically
> collecting, but the majority of collectors are
> well-trained, sophisticated professionals who will
> work with consumers to get the debt paid," said Noelle
> Schaffer, spokeswoman at ACA International, a trade
> association with 5,300 members. "That means finding
> the payment option that will work for them, like a
> flexible-payment option."
>
> The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) received 15,819
> complaints about debt collectors in 2001 -- a tiny
> fraction of the estimated millions of collector
> contacts made annually. Yet those complaints probably
> represent a small portion of the consumers
> experiencing harassment, according to a 2002 FTC
> report.
>
> Many consumers don't know about the law governing debt
> collection, and if they know the law they often don't
> know the FTC enforces it, the report said.
>
> Delinquent debt likely to rise
>
> The stakes for collection agencies in their efforts to
> collect unpaid debt are high. Some $135 billion of
> consumer debt became delinquent in 2001, nearly double
> the $73 billion that entered collection in 1990,
> according to ACA International.
>
> That number will rise if the economy continues its
> slow pace and collectors step-up their strongman
> tactics. "As the economy gets worse, the likelihood of
> collectors using harsher pressure increases," said
> Manuel Newburger, a partner with Austin, Texas-based
> law firm Barron & Newburger, who represents
> collection-industry members.
>
> "People have less ability to pay. As the economy gets
> worse and you have people who lose their jobs, suffer
> salary reductions, cutbacks in their hours, as the
> ability of consumers to pay is diminished, the
> likelihood of being subjected to greater pressure to
> pay increases," Newburger said.
>
> And not all debt collectors will agree to special
> payment arrangements. "I said we were interested in
> paying this," Angela Pike said she told one collector,
> "but we would only be able to pay so much at one time.
> He said that wasn't going to be good enough."
>
> The Pikes retained an attorney to sue the collectors,
> who eventually settled.
>
> Some would like to see the law strengthened to better
> deter collectors from abusing consumers. Possible
> changes include allowing consumers in all states to
> tape record the phone calls they receive from debt
> collectors, which would override some states' laws
> requiring both parties agree to such recordings,
> according to Steve Tripoli, consumer advocate with the
> National Consumer Law Center.
>
> Tripoli said such recordings have proved to be the
> strongest evidence in debt-collection cases.
>
> "We have an economy that features both very high
> personal debt loads and an almost unprecedented level
> of long-term unemployment," Tripoli said. "There's a
> lot of stress and pressure in that segment of the
> population. That's why we think this is a good time to
> strengthen this law."
>
> At least one family won't be needing to invoke the law
> again. Said Angela Pike: "We've definitely learned
> never, ever to take out a payday loan ever again."

So now you see that the severity of the problems debtors face simply depends on who is telling the story. If you listen to or believe the collection agency propaganda ministers everything is just hunky-dory and there are no problems and only occasional debtor abuse by some employee who just happens to be having a bad day and gets over zealous and when that happpens they get fired so no big problem.

Listen to those who are in the trenches and suffering the abuse heaped upon them, listen to what the regulators are telling us and listen to the advocacy groups and you soon learn the truth and the magnitude of the problem.

And the best solution is probably not more government regulation. We already have enough and we should long ago have learned the fact that government always has answers to our problems and their answers soon result in even more problems but seldom any real solutions.

An example is Iraq. Even if we depose Saddam that is just the beginning of the problems for the people of Iraq.

 

We must be our own attorney generals and not let these people get away with such flagrant violations of our consumer rights.
kalinka
==============
they couldn't get away with things like this if we didn't do business with them could they?

The END ************************* LB 59

 

LB, you are an absolute genius! Now why more people don't just follow your advice I'll never know.

We know they don't need any cars and tents are real cheap instead of buying houses. And ice chests are much cheaper than referigerators just like gasoline camp stoves are cheaper than those fancy stoves with all them fance gidgets, bells and whistles.

They don't need any new clothes. They can just go diving in the goodwill boxes every night and come up with all the clothes they could ever want. And they don't have to have any washing machines or clothes dryers either. When their goodwill clothes get dirty just chunk them in the nearest dumpster out behind some store so they don't have to pay to get their trash hauled off. Same thing with dishes and dish washers. They can get their dishes the same way they get their clothes. Diving into the goodwill boxes.

They can always get a bath down at the rescue mission too. Or just go jump in the lake.

Just think how much people could save if they just followed your advice.

 

Re: Re: Cap One busted in Boise Idaho

Bur if every body did this it would put the hurt on them would it not.?