Has anyone read the opinion letter from the FTC attorney John LeFevre to Robet G. Cass of Commercial Financial Services. Item II in the letter refers to "Continued collection activity" after the CA has received but not responded to a consumers written dispute. It reads, in part: "Although FDCPA is unclear on this point, we believe the reality is that debt collectors use the reporting mechanism as a tool to persuade consumers to pay, just like dunning letters and telephone calls. Of course, if a dispute is received after a debt has been reported to a consumer reporting agency, the debt collector is obligated by Section 1692g(8) to inform the CRA of the dispute." Does anyone have an idea of what this really means? I have written to Mr. LeFevre for clarification of his meaning.
It means, if you receive a dunning letter, and send them validation BEFORE they put it on your credit report - they then can't put it on until they have validated the account. If they put it on your cr before you send a validation letter to them, they have to notify the CRA that it is in dispute. One of the easiest violations you can catch a CA on IMHO. In fact, sending out an ITS letter to my next CA victim in the next couple of days....cha ching!
Yep... It's one of the opinions that you'll want to have bookmarked to be ready to quote from at the drop of a hat... I just used it (and a whole lot of other things) to show that a DF who was prohibited from "collection activities" by their settlement with the FTC could not LEGALLY have verified the account with the CRA. (They were specifically allowed *AN* update under 623(a) to show that no balance was owed to them; but prohibited from anything else defined as Collection Activities... They incorrectly decided to interpret that as having carte blanche to verify to their hearts content...
