Well, it's interesting that their response to *MY* BBB complaint really opens the door to blowing everything up (They were so nice to claim that the FTC's response to my complaint to the head of the Bureau of Financial Practices 'thoroughly reviewed their marketing materials and found them to be compliant'.) Despite the fact that even when the head of the Bureau of Consumer Protection, while thanks to NME's council had to do the Irish jig - so that *HE* wasn't violating the law by answering the question that NME's council forced him to answer. ) Hint: an FTC "Letter of Closure" will never say a company did not violate the law; it'll only say that just as if your company settled, your company didn't admit violating; our decision to close the complaint is not a finding that your company didn't violate the law. I take it Linda didn't think that a consumer would have the hutspah to write personally to, and personally speak with, the director of the FTC BCP. I love it when mouthpieces for the industry misunderestimate lil' ole' moi... BTW: Have you ever needed to write a motion to amend; I actually need to add about 30 more counts to the NME case; even after being served they've continued sending not one, but TWO more solicitations. So much for adding me to their "no mail" list. February 20 & TODAY... 1 month after they were sent the summons, and AO399's...
I don't have legal expertise, only general business knowledge, with an interest in assymetric games and how people engage in deceipt. The whole debt collection industry exists to tilt disputes in favor of the alleged creditor. This particular thread has also been interesting from the point of view of using statistics to extract patterns and changes in behavior, and a couple analysis techniques I am studying that are usually used for screening hypotheses against information collected for troubleshooting and problem solving. I have primarily dealt with various problems by "aggressive persuasion", climbing up the chain of command, while documenting and memorializing all communications to pin down any admissions or agreements and hold an organization to what they agreed to. Essentially a social negotiating strategy that works best with OCs, and works best when you keep good records and pursue problems quickly.
It might be instructive to compare Afni's recent level of consumer complaints against the IL AG complaint against Arrow below, as an indication of what it might take to get an IL AG response against Afni. http://www.illinoisattorneygeneral.gov/pressroom/2007_01/arrow_financial_complaint.pdf
I love paragraph 29... We will not give you our address because we don't want you to harass us... BUT until you pay us this debt that the OC confirmed that you don't owe, we'll call you day and night to harass you. 38 is a gold-mine too... My boss said I don't give a damn that the consumer said to not contact her at work, we can do whatever the hell we please... 75 is a really good one for AFNI... We never got a f---ing police report so this account was not ID theft... And C1 would put her in the f---ing jail...
The Illinois complaint against Arrow claims 669 complaints filed with the IL Attorney General and over 800 with BBB. In comparison, Afni's BBB report shows 469 complaints processed in the last 3 years, with 266 "closed" in the last year. That makes 25 since 2-26-07, for 25 per 14 days, or 1.8 per day, a rate of about 54 per month. Assuming BBB started getting increased complaints in mid-January from Afni's recent increase in activity that started in early January, BBB may have closed about 100 or more complaints since the beginning of the year. They may have received substantially more that have yet to be processed. Actually, it is likely that most of the 266 complaints reported for the last year are from the beginning of this year, as various other complaint sources show a drastic increase in complaint rate this year compared to earlier, and BBB's complaints probably followed that same pattern. Estimated in this manner, BBB complaints since the first of the year alone are probably over 200. If a similar fraction also complained to the IL AG as in the Arrow case, then the IL AG should have around 160 complaints since the first of the year. It might be substantially higher, since reported BBB complaints are based on "closed" or "processed", not on received, while the IL AG would have complaint counts of their own whether they had yet received any response from Afni yet.
In at least these 2 recent reports, Afni has folded in response to a consumer dispute and validation request. In one case, a consumer reports that they received the earlier reported Afni letter saying they couldn't investigate unless the consumer sent additional information, yet a few days later a second letter said simply that they had "investigated" and closed the account, collection would stop, and they apologized for the "inconvenience". Although they appear to have folded in the past due to either BBB or AG complaints, in these 2 reports it does not appear that such complaints on these particular "debts" were a direct factor. The conciliatory change in tone may indicate they are getting heat from somewhere, perhaps due to the accumulating volume of complaints. http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/3894/page/5 "1 days ago by Catlady *read my previous posts for more details on my ordeal with Afni* GREAT NEWS UPDATE!! Got another letter from Afni today!! You're probably thinking 'why is she happy she got a letter from Afni?' Well this one says they investigated and surprise, surprise, the account has been closed! Well DUH!! Funny thing is this is only 5 days since I got the letter saying they couldn't investigate because I didn't provide the personal information they wanted. Guess either they figured that they just plain weren't getting that from me and gave up, or the other letter was from a different department and was a standard response and this one is in actual response to the certified letter I sent them. Either way according to this last letter they are no longer going to be bugging me! YAY! And I still hadn't even gotten that letter mailed out to my state's Attorney General yet. Maybe sometimes procrastinating for 5 days to proof read and revise a letter is a good thing? lol Saved me the postage anyways. Anyways this is what today's letter from Afni says... "This letter is to inform you that we have investigated your dispute related to the referenced account. based on the investigation this account has been closed. Afni, Inc. will take no further collection action. In addition, if this account has been subject to credit reporting, the credit reporting agencies will be directed to remove this account from your credit report. Please note, it may take up to 60 days for the account to be removed from your record at all of the credit reporting agencies. In the interim, you may use this letter as a notice regarding the status of the account. We apologize for the inconvenience this situation may have caused. Sincerely, Afni, Inc." ..." And if they triggered a universal default clause, what good is that? "32 minutes ago by Sarah Well good news for me. Got a letter today from Afni saying that they closed the account and yada yada. Pretty much the same letter saying they couldn't validate as others have received. "
8 more BBB complaints closed since yesterday. That makes 33 since 2-26-07, for 33 per 15 days, or 2.2 per day, a rate of about 66 per month. "The Bureau processed a total of 477 complaints about this company in the last 36 months, our standard reporting period. Of the total of 477 complaints closed in 36 months, 274 were closed in the last year."
Just think how many of their letters that's a representation of... The people that they want to get are the people who auto-respond to bills with cutting a check without questions.
If I mailed out mass mailings of bills for "directory services", "advertising", or whatever a consumer had not ordered, I would be nailed for criminal mail fraud. But because this is called "debt", even if probably illegitimate or to the wrong party, that's just a minor civil matter.
Well, companies try to get away with the false invoices... There are companies which regularly send out invoices for domain registration renewals, to SLAM the registrant to a new registrar when they 'pay' the 'bill'.
Just wanted to do a follow-up... There is no way in hades that the company would know who this account is... Just in the PA Unclaimed Property database, Verizon owes 9 people with my exact name funds... Bell owes over 8 people with my exact name funds... Now, if my name is so common as to result in over 17 exact matches ONLY in Verizon's UNCLAIMED PROPERTY databases, how many of people who have my exact name would be Verizon customers, currently, and in the past 10 years... Then consider that as a smaller sub-section of how many people have my exact name in the STATE... The joys of having such a common name.
So is Afni mailing out their collection notices to ONE consumer randomly chosen from all the possible name matches in some area, or are they mailing them out to ALL the name matches and putting all responders thru this, demanding identity info and id theft police reports from all? Since some consumer reports have indicated Afni pulled their credit reports several months prior to sending their letters, did they pull reports on just one consumer, or on all the name matches? What "permissible purpose" liability might this result in, when almost all of the pulls would be the wrong party? As far as what tools they appear to be using, they appear to at least be a customer of Lexis-Nexis/Accurint, and consumer complaint reports show they had access to SSNs, even when a call to Verizon showed no accounts under their name or SSN, and they also had access to past addresses, as well as relative and ex- names and addresses. It is not clear whether Verizon has old GTE account records easily accessible. One such consumer report noted that the Afni inquiry was "soft", unlike most CA inquiries, implying they knew up front they might be pulling reports from the wrong parties, and might have tried to minimize their exposure to liability for damages, even though "soft" vs. "hard" makes no difference with regard to permissible purpose. Such "account review" pulls also might avoid tripping credit monitoring notifications. It might be tempting to call some of your "clones" and ask them if they got a similar letter, for the identical amount and account number. Odds are most of the people you could find are NOT the correct "debtor", and in fact if you called some outside your immediate area, it might tell you how far afield Afni's net was cast. Anyone NOT receiving one of their letters wouldn't know what the hell you were talking about, while anyone who DID get one is probably as pissed as you. I can see it now: "John Smiths (a class) vs. Afni"!
Yeppers, that's definitely how it looks... We found x john does, let's throw a dart to see which one will pay...
3 more BBB complaints processed since last report. That makes 36 since 2-26-07, for 36 per 17 days, or 2.1 per day, a rate of about 64 per month. "The Bureau processed a total of 482 complaints about this company in the last 36 months, our standard reporting period. Of the total of 482 complaints closed in 36 months, 277 were closed in the last year."
This angle might also be pertinent if Afni is blindly poking into credit reports as indiscriminantly as it is mailing collection letters. For example, if they have pulled a bunch of "John Smith" credit reports, fishing for who to go after, or they pull reports of whoever responds to their letters ("We've got a live one here!"), they might be crossing beyond the domain of collection permissible purpose, into FCRA violations of privacy thru "fishing" thru credit reports, if "most" of the John Smith reports pulled were the wrong party. A defense of "permissible purpose for collection" might require that they have a "reasonable belief" that each report they were pulling was of a consumer whose debt they had a right to collect on. If they were pulling all "John Smiths in XXX County", in attempting to collect on one "John Smith" debt, that belief would not be reasonable. The possibility of maybe finding the correct debtor later might not provide permissible purpose for all the pulls used before they had any idea which consumer was the debtor. There was a case in the 1990s where a CA wanted to just pull a bunch of consumer reports in their region, find out what was on them, and then "efficiently" approach the creditors reporting unpaid debts to go after the consumers. Problem was they had no PP to even do the pull, even if they later had it after approaching a creditor to get a debt assigned to them. Getting the collection account later did not remedy the illegallity of the inquiry at the time it was made. http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2007/03/ny_credit_reports.html http://www.oag.state.ny.us/press/2007/mar/mar07a_07.html "Department of Law 120 Broadway New York, NY 10271 212-416-8060 For Immediate Release: Department of Law The State Capitol Albany, NY 12224 518-473-5525 March 07, 2007 ATTORNEY GENERAL CUOMO OBTAINS COMPENSATION FOR NEW YORKERS WHOSE CREDIT REPORTS WERE ACCESSED ILLEGALLY -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- New York insurance company to pay $229,600 in compensation to nearly 400 consumers NEW YORK, NY (March 7, 2007) - Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo today announced a settlement affecting nearly 400 New York consumers whose credit reports were unlawfully accessed by an insurance company. Under the settlement, Administrators for the Professions, Inc. (AFP), a New York insurance company, is paying $229,600 in compensation to those consumers. Between November 2000 and March 2006, AFP obtained more than 800 consumer credit reports on approximately 400 different individuals from the credit reporting agencies Equifax and TransUnion. An overwhelming majority of the consumersâ?? credit reports were acquired for purposes not permitted by the federal and state Fair Credit Reporting Acts. Credit reports may be legally obtained by agents such as potential credit grantors, employers, or insurers, or with a consumerâ??s permission. AFP, however, illegally provided credit reports for use as investigative tools in civil litigation, for use in connection with insurance claims, and for satisfying requestersâ?? personal curiosity. Credit reports were also unlawfully attained for investigators trying to locate parties in matrimonial and other personal matters, and for individuals looking to acquire information about an estranged spouse. ..."
17 more BBB complaints closed since last update. That makes 50 since 2-26-07, for 50 per 21 days, or 2.4 per day, a rate of about 71 per month. "The Bureau processed a total of 496 complaints about this company in the last 36 months, our standard reporting period. Of the total of 496 complaints closed in 36 months, 291 were closed in the last year."
Another Federal FDCPA suit: http://dockets.justia.com/docket/court-ilndce/case_no-1:2007cv01430/case_id-207096/
A little background: http://www.pantagraph.com/articles/2006/07/28/business/doc44c946e94b2d8986554285.txt
