Hello all, I got a letter around August 8th from Consumer Recovery Associates for an old debt from 2004 from US Bank. I sent out a request for validation disputing the validity of the debt in it's entirety on August 20th, 2010 via CMRR. I have received no coorospondence from them since. However, on September the 4th, I received an alert from my credit monitoring service that the account had shown up on my Experian report. It has not shown up on any others. I've disputed it with Experian stating that I had requested validation which had not been received and I'm waiting for the results of that investigation. My next thought was to send another letter to the CA advising that I am aware of their illegal activity and requesting that it be removed until it can be validated and carbon copying the attorney general of New Mexico (my state of residence). I should also mention that although it did not appear until September on my report, I noticed that the collection is showing as a derog as of July. Is it possible that they had reported it legitimately but I couldn't see it until September? Also, I noticed that they are showing a date opened of May 5th, 2010. However, the last late payment on the US Bank account was as of 2004. Could I have them on a possible illegal re-aging of the account?
My guess is they probably reported the collection to Experian around the same time they sent out the letter to you. Sometimes it can take about a month or more for it to actually show up on your reports, which may be why you didn't see it until early September. As far as your plan goes, I'd still say go for it. There's much debate over whether reporting the collection can be considered a continuation of collection activity, but there's nothing to my knowledge that says it isn't. I would wait to hear back from Experian on your dispute first before following up with the CA. Finally, the open date and date of last payment are different. The open date they are reporting is probably just the date they purchased the debt. Do you have a charge off reported as well from the OC, or is this just an assigned debt?
No, the charge off from the OC has been removed. However, from my understanding, a collection account can only show for 7 years from the date of last deliquency. Therefor, my concern is that since the only date that is reflected is the May 2010 date, could this be considered re-aging?
So, they clearly bought the debt from the OC. And if that's the only date they are showing as your date of delinquency on your credit reports, then yes, it sounds like that could be considered re-aging, which is of course illegal.
