A while back I had a Sears card that went delinquent to the tune of $360. About two years ago (well within the SOL) I received a "credit card settlement". Basically, if I signed up for an account with Plains Commerce Bank, they would transfer the overdue Sears balance onto a new Visa with a $360 credit limit. I figured "fair is fair", since I did owe the debt. I took the card, paid it off in one swoop, and began rebuilding my credit. Sometimes you've just got to bite the bullet and take responsibility for your actions. I have long since changed card companies. Fast forward to today. I get a call -- on my cell phone, which I never give out, ever -- from a rep at a collection agency representing Sears (four-letter name, I'll leave it up to your imagination). I didn't recognize the 800#, so I let it go to voicemail. She left the following message: Two FDCPA violations, just like that. One strong and one so-so. The strong one is that they're attempting to collect a debt that's already been settled. Fortunately, I had the good sense to keep all my paperwork at the time. The so-so one is that by leaving a voicemail stating that they're collecting a debt, they've effectively sent me a postcard. CAs are not allowed to disclose that they are debt collectors to a third party, and the CA obviously had no way of knowing that this was definitely my phone number (otherwise, she wouldn't have said "If this isn't (my name), hang up now"). I called a local attorney. He agreed with my assessment, but said it would be best to let things simmer for a few months. "Give them as much rope as they want, and let them hang themselves over and over and over again," he said. He said that a single voicemail could be chalked up to bona fide error; for example, a new employee who didn't properly record her outgoing message. But if they kept calling and leaving similar messages, it would become harder for the company to claim "honest mistake" with each passing message. He's also researching 47USC227 to see how strong the "established business relationship" must be in order to be exempt from the law regarding not auto-dialing a cell phone. Today was a good day.
That's the most interesting question of all. The only people who have my cell phone number are my employer, my immediate family, my friends, and my security alarm monitoring company. When I have to give a contact number to a business, I use Google Grand Central to assign a point-of-presence number in my local area. My bank, my car service center, and everybody else all get the GGC number. I'm actually very open about giving that number out, since they can't translate that to my actual cell #, and incoming calls are identified as coming from GGC. So, short answer? I have no idea.
Unbelievable. My week just got 3000x better! I have a debt in dispute with a very large and well-known NJ JDB. It's clearly marked as a dispute on all three credit reports, and I have all my documentation in a row on this. The DV was sent well within the 30-day window, and the JDB has been struggling with it ever since (this is the one that just went past SOL that I mentioned in a previous post, incidentally). Recently I disputed this entry with the CRAs. All three came back as "Information verified Feb 2009". With the FTC having said that reporting to a CRA constitutes "continued collection activity" while a proper DV is in effect, I think I'm heading down the highway to ThreeMoreViolationsInMyPocketVille! I've sent CMRRRs to all three CRAs requesting an explanation of how they validated, including any supporting documentation provided by the JDB. If they send anything back, it sounds like a pretty solid case. Has anyone gone through this before?
