Letter to Ford Credit's Attorney

Here's a letter I just typed to send to the law office that I've been dealing with regarding my Ford Probe that was involved in an accident in 1998. Ford insists it's a repossession with an $8,540 balance. The law office says the balance is $2,029.11.

To give credit where credit is due, I decided to take a Greg Fisher-like approach in this letter. Greg, your webpages still crack me up.



July 1, 2001

Law Office of Friedman & Patenaude


Attn: Diana D. Montgomery, Esq.
Re: Your file number xxxx


Dear Madam:

Iâ??m very confused that I have received no reply from your office to my letter dated May 21, 2001 for which I have a certified return receipt. I am ready, willing, and able to pay whatever amount we can agree upon to settle this account. How many accounts are you trying to collect from people who can say this to you?

You wrote me on May 17th to advise me of a potential settlement offer. In your letter you said I had to call your office to get specific details about this settlement. I wrote you back on May 21st to inquire about this offer. Why no reply? Must our communication about a settlement be by telephone? Why would you not want a written record of our correspondence?

I am enclosing a copy of email correspondence I have exchanged directly with Ford Motor Credit. The person who responded to my complaint says you have full authority to â??address any issuesâ? about this account. My only issue before I can pay you remains the repossession listed on my credit reports.

I disputed the repossession on my Experian report, and Ford Motor Credit verified it was fully accurate. I am enclosing the entry of my Experian report with this letter. In June of 2001, Ford Motor Credit verified under the terms of the Fair Credit Reporting Act that the balance owed on this account is $8,540. Your letters to me are asking for $2,029.11. Your last letter to me offered to â??discount a substantial portionâ? of the balance owed. What is the true amount of money you are collecting for your client? What is the true balance that should be listed on my credit reports? Was my car a repossession or an accident loss? What amount of money was paid to Ford Motor Credit by my insurance company? Is the $8,540 Ford Motor Credit is reporting the balance from before or after the insurance payoff? Why wonâ??t Ford Motor Credit or the Law Office of Friedman & Patenaude reply to my letters?

Iâ??m going to quote a couple of sections from your first letter to me dated March 15, 2001. â??If you notify the office of the undersigned in writing within the thirty (30) day period that the debt, or any portion thereof is disputed, this office will obtain verification of the debt or a copy of a judgment against you and a copy of such verification or judgment will be mailed to you by the undersigned.â? I requested this verification in my letter to you dated March 19, 2001. It was signed for at your office on March 21, 2001. Where is my â??copy of such verificationâ?? Was this idea of â??verificationâ? mine or yours? Is three months a reasonable time it usually takes for you to obtain and mail it? If not, what reasonable period of time do you think I should allow? Do people normally pay you whatever amount you demand without requesting this verification you offered? Do you think thatâ??s the intelligent thing for someone to do? Would you pay someone who offered to verify a debt they said you owed but then provided no such verification? Since I havenâ??t received any verification from you, what conclusion is it reasonable for me to form? Is it reasonable to conclude there is nothing owed? What would you conclude if you were in my situation? â??If, however we do not hear from you, we may have no alternative but to commence legal action against youâ?¦â? Just what are your intentions in this regard since you will not reply to my letters? Under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act it is against the law for you to threaten legal action if you do not intend to take such action. Is your strategy to pretend you havenâ??t heard from me, to refuse to verify the validity of this debt and take me to court? How will you explain to the judge the copies I have of my certified letters to you and their associated return receipts? Who in your opinion do you think a judge would see has made a good faith effort to resolve this account?

Please â?? reply to my letter today. Include the verification you offered on March 15, 2001. Include your settlement offer in writing. Include your written promise to delete all information regarding Ford Motor Credit from my credit reports upon receipt of my payment. If your written settlement offer is fair and is accompanied by the promise to delete, Iâ??ll send you a check the very day I receive your letter. If youâ??d like I will even hand deliver a check to your office on Third Street. If you canâ??t provide the verification, apologize and send me notice that the negative information placed on my credit reports by Ford Motor Credit has been removed. If you sense a degree of frustration in my writing, youâ??d be correct. The very day I received your first letter about this account I contacted your office to try to resolve this matter. It is now almost four months since then and this is still going on. What effort do you expect me to make to resolve this that I have not already made?

Sincerely,
DaveLV

 

The insurance company only pays fair market value, not the payoff on the loan in all cases. They never told me how much they paid and I never asked until I got the letter from the law office in March.

I no longer have insurance with the company (AIG) and they will not return my calls. I did mail them a letter asking for the information with a copy to the state as Breeze suggested. I've yet to hear back from them.

 

Well, this still sounded good this morning (I always wait a day before I mail a sarcastic letter so I can read it while I'm calm to see if I still think it's a good idea to send it). I'll let everyone know if I get any response.

 

Sure did. Since then we've exchanged emails, faxes, letters and this battle is still going on.

 

I haven't been able to get through to them, so I have no real suggestions other than to just write and call and keep doing so. I haven't gotten them to remove the repo (it is improperly scheduled to fall off in Feb, 2003 on Experian -- so I'm not complaining too hard) and it was deleted off TU in a dispute, so it is only hurting me on EQ, really.

I look up Ford Credit on the local court calendar all the time and they sue lots of people, but so far haven't come after me. So I'm content to keep writing nasty letters to keep them at bay.

 

There's a TON of it and I won't have time before I leave for vacation, but I can begin to when I return in a couple of weeks.

 

Thanks, MP. This is a very old thread that Greg revived (from July of last year) so there have been many more letters, faxes and email exchanges since then.

I'll update everyone when I get back in a couple of weeks.