Confused about DV

It is not a violation of FDCPA, since they are the OC. But it might be a violation of the FCRA, if they are reporting in error, or possibly of the FACTA amendments to FCRA, for failing to investigate a dispute.

Have you been contacted by the CA, and have you DV'd them?

Do you believe the TL reported by the OC is in error?

 

If you got a letter from the CA, then you would want to DV them, within 30 days, to get them to validate or stop collection until they do.

If the OC TL is grossly erroneous, you might have an FCRA violation from them, since you have disputed thru the CRA, the OC changed and then verified the erroneous changes, and the OC ignored your direct dispute.

If you do so, you should consider what their action will likely be.

Is it past SOL?
Did they re-age it? Does the CRA report a later date for it to be removed than 7 years from the first delinquency?

 

The OC's letter admits they don't know whether, or what, amount is owed, yet they are reporting and verifying anyway? The CR TL is under the OC's name, not the CA's?

The party reporting is responsible for ensuring they are reporting accurately, in compliance with FCRA.

What type of account is this?

 

Contact an attorney with experience in FCRA and FDCPA litigation. They may have handed you an admission of erroneous reporting, verified to the CRA, and now grossly erroneous.

 

You could try it. The CRA is supposed to forward that as part of your dispute to the DF (the OC), which should have it anyway. They often only summarize it, which may result in nothing other than the results you have already seen, but it might establish further liability for the OC for failing to investigate and correct, and for the CRA for failling to forward the information provided by the consumer, as required by FCRA, increasing the appearance that this is negligent or willful, instead of an unintentional accident, should this end up in court.

If that doesn't work, how would this play out if you sued the OC? You now have more erronous reporting, and they appear to want to not deal with this, even though they are still reporting and responding to CRA disputes.

Is there a reason they might have no records, such as they bought the company that had the original debt, and their records are screwed up, and is there any possibility they might respond to legal action by suing to collect on the debt, or have they sold the debt off and no longer want to deal with it at all (in which case, why report what you aren't or can't document)?

Is there some problem with the legitimacy of the debt on top of their new erroneous reporting? What type of account or debt was this?

In other words, if you can prove erroneous reporting, and they can't sue if it is past SOL, what are their motives, and what is their likely response? How would a judge weigh their responsibility for damages to you from erroneous reporting against any responsibility on your part based on the legitimacy of an unpaid, but past SOL, debt?

 

Most consumers do hate litigation. They basically want to be left alone.

But if letters and disputes accomplish nothing, what is your alternative? The law (FCRA and FDCPA) specifically gives you that choice when disputes with CRAs, OCs, or CAs do not fix the problem. According to Congress, in its infinite wisdom (they are almost all lawyers after all), litigation in an appropriate court is the next stage allowed by law.

You do not have to depend on FTC, or an AG, to decide whether your problem is significant enough to bother with. To cover the costs of enforcing the law thru private litigation, it even allows for your attorney's fees to be paid by the CA or DF. As long as your case is not frivolous, it does not provide the same for the other side. You may just have to look at it as disputing thru an alternative channel, in this case a judge, with a professional assistant on your side, your attorney.

Under the FACTA amendments to FCRA, the DF has an obligation to conduct a "reasonable" investigation to a consumer dispute. Your dispute thru the OC would be under that requirement, not FDCPA. The OC reply that they have nothing, while they verify disputes thru the CRA, may have been defensible before FACTA, but it is not "reasonable" as an investigation of a dispute of erroneous reporting. See an attorney with appropriate experience.

 

A contract is not always in writing. If a vendor makes an offer, even verbally, and a customer accepts the offer and agrees to pay, there is a contract. The delivery of the product, and payment, would document that there was an agreement, even if the parties argued over what that agreement was.

That said, a contract with a specific term would probably have to be in writing. I think there is even something in UCC about contracts where performance by either party extends over a year being required to be reduced to writing, and with a fixed term, this is not some open revolving credit account.

For an auto loan, there would have been a signed contract. Do you have a copy, or are you trying to force the other party to produce one to support your claim that they are misreporting the balance due, re-aging, etc?

Was the car reposessed or returned, and if so, did they follow your state's laws regarding auctioning of reposessed vehicles and disclosure of costs, in order to make their recovery of such costs legal?


There is specific language regarding data furnishers knowingly reporting erroneously in FCRA:
http://www.ftc.gov/os/statutes/fcradoc.pdf

§ 623..Responsibilities of furnishers of information to consumer reporting agencies
[15 U.S.C.§ 1681s-2 ]
(a)Duty of Furnishers of Information to Provide Accurate Information
(1)Prohibition
(A)Reporting information with actual knowledge of errors.A person shall not
furnish any information relating to a consumer to any consumer reporting
agency if the person knows or has reasonable cause to believe that the
information is inaccurate.
(B)Reporting information after notice and confirmation of errors.A person
shall not furnish information relating to a consumer to any consumer
reporting agency if
(i)the person has been notified by the consumer,at the address specified by
the person for such notices,that specific information is inaccurate;and
(ii)the information is,in fact,inaccurate."


and about reporting as disputed if it is disputed by the consumer:
"§ 605..Requirements relating to information contained in consumer reports [15 U.S.C.§1681c ]
...
(f)Indication of dispute by consumer .If a consumer reporting agency is notified pursuant
to section 623(a)(3)[§ 1681s--2 ] that information regarding a consumer who was
furnished to the agency is disputed by the consumer,the agency shall indicate that fact
in each consumer report that includes the disputed information."

and about failure of a debt collector to report as disputed (or, it would appear, to notify the OC that they are working for that the consumer disputes the debt), in FDCPA:
http://www.ftc.gov/os/statutes/fdcpa/fdcpact.htm#807

"§ 807. False or misleading representations [15 USC 1692e]
...
(8) Communicating or threatening to communicate to any person credit information which is known or which should be known to be false, including the failure to communicate that a disputed debt is disputed. "

Note: I am NOT an attorney.

 

The CRAs just do what the OCs tell them to do.

Disputing thru the CRAs verifies that the OCs intended to report as it appears on your CRs, so the OCs are then responsible for any errors in their reporting.

At that point, if what is being reported is significantly erroneous, go after the one reporting.

If you were dealing with a mixed file, misidentification, or id theft, and the OCs information intended to be put on some other consumer's report were showing on yours, then you would have to deal directly with the CRAs.

 

If you received a consumer dispute forwarded from FTC, how would you handle it? Would you send it to the same minimum wage clerks who handled it the first time, or would you handle it more carefully?

Include in your FTC complaint that the OC claims they are not reporting, but the CRA shows them as reporting. If the CRA is not tracking the party actually reporting, and accurately disclosing this to the consumer (their "investigation" is required to indicate who they checked with, and they typically do this by just referring to the consumer report) they are not complying with FCRA.