Help With Collection Agency

Re: Help With Capital One

An existing customer with a perfect history of more than 2 years, Capital One suddenly did the same thing to me, bought a 10 year old charge off and then sent me an 'offer' of a new Visa card with the FULL AMOUNT of the charge off as the balance.

All they are doing is preying upon the ignorance of people, hoping that some dope will reaffirm a debt to have no reason to pay.

What you do is send a CEASE and DESIST letter to the address on the correspondence you received telling them not to contact you again. Then they are allowed to contact you only once more.

You are never going to get the credit you deserve from Capital One, I suggest you close your existing accounts, that's what I did.

 

Kevinw01:

I realize that you probably feel that what they just did to you is a really low blow from a company with whom you were trying to do business in an honorable manner. And it was a rather rotten thing for them to have done.

Capitol One has a rather agressive collection agency and it is the collection agency "department" that has done this to you. One thing that is true beyond a shadow of a doubt is that the collections department may well have pulled your credit report in order to come up with that old debt if indeed it was listed on your credit report. If you get the credit report(s) that had that listing on it and you check it carefully to see who all pulled your credit report recently then you may be able to spot where it was most likley them who did so because it will state that the purpose was for collections and will list CapOne. If you are lucky, that will be the only time capone pulled your report during the last few months. In the event that you can prove that it was capone then you may be able to prove that it was pulled for an inpermissible purpose. That would give you some leverage against them at least. I am not certain that you can file a lawsuit against them, but it is a possibility that you might want to look into. It's a long shot, but might be worthwhile looking into.

Then as Aigle has suggested, you should immediately send the collection agency a validation letter and go from there. They may very well attempt to re-age the debt on you and you should oppose that vigorously through the credit bureaus to keep it from becoming a 7 year item all over again. You should also keep any older credit reports you might have that show the true age of the debt. In this situation, you will need to prove to the credit bureaus what the true age of the debt actually is and demand that it be reported in it's true status which is to say, not at all because the listing is beyond the 7 year statute of limitations and you should immediately threaten to turn the matter over to your attorney if it is not removed immediately. If you do have older reports showing date of last activity or any older date and it is re-aged then you would have grounds for small claims filing to force them to remove if you choose to do that.

It is highly unlikely that they would ever let it go to court. There are also other things you can do if they re-age the account such as filing complaints with the BBB and other authorities.

I would be most upset as I am sure you are. In the end, the debt cannot be collected upon unless you accept their offer in which case it is as if it were a brand new debt. You did not state whether or not the letter you received carried a mini-miranda notice at the bottom or not. If it did not, I would also use that as another avenue of attack because no matter how thinly veiled or how well sugar coated, it was an attempt to collect a debt and should have carried the mini-miranda notice. If not, they are in violation of FDCPA right from the git-go. I've seen a couple other people complaining about capone for the same reason but have not seen any mention of the presence or absence of the mini-miranda on the letter that I can remember.
You should keep the letter they sent you either way. Quite often little tid-bits like that pop up which give you an unexpected lever to use in your behalf.

I'll let this post be for now so I don't get to rambling on forever.

 

OK, Here's what you do...
*Send a Cease and Decist letter
*DON'T PAY A DIME (this debt is past the SOL to collect and is no longer on your reports. Your obligation to legally pay is over. If you want to pay for moral reasons, go right ahead. Just remember that the 7 year reporting clock could be restarted on a 10-year old debt)
*Keep the Cap One cards and if they don't increase your limit based on that past debt then sue them for discrimination. Ok, maybe that is a little rough, but that debt is no longer on your reports. You have perfect payment history now with them. Why should you be punished forever?
*RELAX. You don't have to talk to any collection agency over the phone. In fact, you have the right to request that everything is dont through the US Mail Service. So, send them that C&D letter (I have a sample if you need one) and they can no longer contact you except to tell you that they are not going to contact you.
*Good Luck. Don't worry about that debt. It is no longer hurting your credit.

Hope this helps!

 

Erica.

It's sure gonna hurt him if he falls for that slick trick of theirs, isn't it?

 

Bill,

If he was going to fall for that trick, I'm sure he wouldn't have asked for our help.

 

Shame on Capital One for trying to trick people and cheat them in this way. I think they ought to be required to state the true facts of the matter as we have discussed here.

 

Erica:

I guess old George didn't stop to think about our preachers, did he?

And he also said that spotted owls would be coming out of their ears!

 

Go enable your email Kevin.

breeze