My husband and I have three collection accounts. I sent out validation letters to all three. None of these accounts are showing on our credit reports, but I did want to get a head start on them. 2 we have not paid any money on, but the last one I have been paying 100 per month for 4 months. I sent the validations on all three and it is just past the 30 day mark and I have not heard anything from any of them! What should be my next step????
If it were me, I'd wait and see if they attempt to contact you to collect the debt, or report it to a CRA. Remember, the CA is not required to validate to you ever. They just have to validate before they attempt to collect or report. You sent the letters CRRR, right? So you have proof that they got your validation letters. Hold onto that, and use it against them if they attempt to collect or it shows up on your report. But I'm still a newbie, so someone with more experience might want to chime in and make a suggestion. Elle
They have each sent letters to me to collect on the debt. I have been paying one of the accounts. I just didn't know what I should do exspecially with the one I have been paying on. They have tacked on all types of additional charges, and I just don't want to pay them any more than I have to.
I see this kind of stuff so often it just about makes me cry. Every one of these message boards tells people to send a validation letter and never tell people what to expect or how to proceed. Therefore, newbies just don't know what to do next. Here they proceed to tell people to send the estoppel letter and then what if that gets the same result? No answers except maybe sue them and the poor newbie don't know how to do that either. So what you need to do is go ahead and send the estoppel letter and get busy learning what to do after that. And yes, 3rd party collectors do have to validate and if they haven't done it within 30 days then you need to get the estoppel letter going.
I posted this 15 months ago here, but perhaps the cross-post will serve a purpose in this thread too. If not, sorry for the redundancy. (begin January 2002 repost) When you request validation, there are only four possible outcomes: Possibility #1: The creditor actually produces validation, in which case you move toward a negotiation stance. This will cost you money. You'll end up paying something for the money you previously borrowed, although that sum will probably be considerably less through negotiation, and you also have an excellent shot at having the creditor reduce or even remove the negative tradelines from the credit files. At the very least, after the account is settled, you can redispute the tradelines with the CRAs, or even move to a "nutcase" scenario where, in effect, YOU become the pursuer who makes demands on the CA, and they begin to wonder when you will go away. The game just plays out differently if they produce adequate validation. Possibility #2: The creditor ignores your request for validation. At this point, you move forward with validation letter #2, and then once ignored again, with the estoppel letter. If everything is ignored, you have grounds for a lawsuit against the CA (as well as a super paper trail which proves they ignored you), because they are obligated under the FDCPA to either validate the debt or forgive it and remove all associated tradelines. If the CA attempts to collect at this point, you have them on another FDCPA violation. At this point you can also attempt to work with the credit reporting agencies, exhibiting the paper trail as evidence, in hopes that they will simply delete. At this point you have, perhaps, a 20% chance (that statistic was pulled right out of my you-know-what, lol, but the point is that you have a chance, although not a great chance) that they will simply remove the tradeline. Finally, you can sue the CRA for ignoring the evidence in small claims court and almost certainly prevail. Possibility #3: The creditor provides inadequate validation. At this point you proceed as if you haven't received validation at all, because you technically have not. The CA has not proven the debt. If they attempt to collect, you've got them on a FDCPA violation. Regardless, you follow up with validation letter #2 and then the estoppel letter (or, you could go straight to estoppel, lol, but remember that you want to build a nice paper trail which shows a judge that you gave them multiple attempts to tell you what in the heck they're talking about vis-a-vis the alleged debt). A visit to small claims court is next at this point, and you will probably prevail. Possibility #4: The creditor apologizes profusely, removes the tradelines, forgives the debt, and just goes away. This is the possibility you hope for, obviously, because it's the easiest of all. Believe it or not, this actually happens quite a bit -- although perhaps not most of the time. Do not make the mistake of thinking that this is what SHOULD happen and that if it doesn't happen you should simply quit. More likely, you're going to travel along one of the paths associated with one of the three other possibilities. Remember that the first three possibilities take time. There is a clear path to travel. Be patient. You are on a journey. If you get lucky and net the fourth possibility, then terrific! If you don't, though, don't make the mistake of believing that you have failed in your efforts and that it's time to give up. The truth is that you're just beginning in that case, and you will probably prevail in the end. Chin up! (end of January 2002 repost) I would also recommend this thread from Creditboards.com: http://www.creditboards.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=177 And, of course, I highly recommend Butch's "What is Validation" thread on Creditnet here. Also, any posting by Marie regarding validation is a must-read. Use Creditnet search for "Marie validation" for those. Doc
Re: Re: No response to validation!! That's a great suggestion Doc. I just did a search on Marie and came up with 910 posts. Much more than that if we do a search for validation of course.
Re: Re: Re: No response to validati might be somewhat helpful. (LOL) But if you think that's bad, I got invited to sign on to a new message board about 9 P.M. last night and immediately went over there to sign on and when I checked the stats I was the 39th person to sign up and now they have just over 400 signers and its not even 24 hours old yet. Its not a credit board however. Its a law discussion board dealing with legal theory. Mostly lawyers, college law professors, judges and that kind of people. I'll bet stuff gets buried so fast won't be able to nothing a couple of hours after its posted. (LOL)
Re: Re: Re: No response to validati Bill, Prairielaw.com is a legal board to that you might be interested in. The problem with them is they tell people just pay the CA and the collections will stop. They don't like Creditnet or our tactics. If you want to check it out be prepared to debate the lawyers there.
Re: Re: Re: Re: No response to vali Yes, I got on that thing a long while back and it didn't take long to figure out that that was an exercise in futility. I've got lots better ways to get things done than getting into endless battles or just plain ignored. But I probably should check into it again just to see what some of the curreent postings are. Right now I'm really tied up with the blogging thing. That is pretty neat stuff. Lots more going on there then first meets the eye. One thing that is cute is the RSS news feeds. It's being said that the journalists and the photographers are using RSS feeds live to bring in the news from Iraq and all over the world. Political stuff too. It can be brought right in to one's website for free and make it available for live news broadcasts on any website. Then the local journalists are picking it up and rehashing it for later stories. It's being claimed now that it was the blogger journalists who latched on to the Trent Lott thing and kept hounding and harping on it until the big media picked it back up and ended up getting him canned. They said it took just over a week to get the big media journalists refocused on the story and get the ball rolling. I guess you can pick up the feeds from just about every major news source in the world and even have it as an icon on your desktop so you can watch the stuff happening live before it shows up on your TV. Of course I won't put the news on creditwrench like that but I am thinking very seriously about putting it on my Magna Carta News Service website. It seems to me like its pretty neat stuff indeed. I do have a couple of feeds on that site now but they are not all that easy to read. Just scrolling text. Back when I set that up you couldn't get CNN and BBC and all the rest of the major news feeds. Blogging is pretty neat stuff.
