In January, I received a letter from a CA re a past due account, OC - Sprint Communications. I do not recognize the account as mine, and I am assuming that this was for a Sprint residential account. Anyway, the strange thing is that the letter from the CA was mailed to my mom's home address - I have not lived there since 1996. Anyway, I sent a CRRR letter requesting validation. It was signed for on 1/24. Yesterday, I get the following letter from the CA: "Dear XXXXXX: This account was purchased by Sherman Acquisition II LP from OSI/Gulf State Credit - original creditor - and placed with Alegis Group LP for servicing. Information you provided regarding this account has been forwarded to the Customer Service Department for research. However, we have been unable to contact you to discuss this account. If we are unable to establish contact with you within 15 days from the date of this letter, this account will return to the Collection Department and active collection efforts will resume for your account. Your account will continue to be reported to the credit reporting agencies as a disputed account. Please contact us at XXXXXXXXX so we may update your contact information and assist you in resolving this account." Now - how should I go about resolving this? Ordinarily, I'd send them another letter demanding that if they fail to validate the debt that they must cease all collection efforts. But, here is my dilemma. I am buying a house and will be closing in the next two months. The mortgage person will be pulling my three reports around the middle of April. As of today, this collection is not on any of my reports, and I don't want it to be. However, although the CA has not provided validation, it appears that they may not be willing to follow the rules. I am tempted to just go on and pay the measly $181 they say I owe (even though I don't recall this account and though it appears it could be beyond SOL - I am in FL). I would pay if I had a guarantee that it would be done and over with and I don't have to be sweating bullets for the next 6 weeks thinking it could pop up on my reports and tank my scores below 620. My scores are: EQ 665, EXP 640, TU 650 Please help!
They HAVE established contact with you: YOU requested validation. They are claiming both that they can continue to collect without first providing validation, and that just marking it in dispute satisfies all their legal requirements. Check your credit reports for all CRAs to determine what they are posting. Dispute with each CRA showing their account. Are you certain you did not have a Sprint account? You may need to be agressive, and it helps to know with certainty how strong your hand is.
Ontrack - I agree with what you said, that they HAVE contacted me. I really can't say with certainty whether it is my account or not. When I lived with my mom (pre-1996), I did have my own separate phone line, but I don't remember what long distance carrier I had (MCI or Sprint). Either way, this account would have been prior to moving from mom's in 1996. Since the CA has not provided validation, I obviously don't have any dates to go by to help me remember whether it's mine or not. I have checked all three reports, and the CA is not yet listed, although the letter states that they will list the account as in dispute. I'm at a lost as to what to do . . . Because of the small amount ($181), I am tempted to send them a letter stating - along with a check for the amount - and state on the letter that by cashing the check, the account is considered paid in full, that all collection efforts will cease, and that the account will not be reported to the three credit reporting agencies. My primary concern now is not allowing that collection account to pop up on my reports and drop my score by 20, 30 or even 40 points. In other words, I'm actually willing to pay the $181 if it means saving me the increased interest rate on the mortgage if my score drops below 620. What are your thoughts?
If the account is from 1996 or earlier, with no payments possibly made after that date, even if they reported, if they reported the date of last delinquency accurately, it would not appear on your report. It might be visible to a lender if the loan amount is over 150K. It is not legal for them to put it on your report, in effect continuing collection, whether they note it as in dispute or not, until they have sent you validation, if you have requested validation within 30 days of their first contact. Do you have a possibly common name, or are there a number of others in your old town with similar names, that they might just have picked you by name?
Note: OSI/Gulf State Credit is NOT an original creditor. Sprint would be. Have you had this, or any collection show up on your reports in the past, under the names of other CAs? Do your credit reports show your correct current and past addresses, or are there addresses listed at which you have never lived?
I do have a very common name - and there probably at least a hundred people (if not more) in the city where I live with the same name.
Okay this is thing - I am looking at first letter of communcation, dated 1/4/2005. It came from Vital Recovery Services, Inc. In the body of the letter, it says: Sherman Acquisition II LP has purchased the above referenced telecommunications account from Sprint Communications Company. Then letter number 2 (follow-up to my request for validation), which is dated 3/3/2005, says "this account was purchased by Sherman Acquisition II LP from OSI/Gulf State Credit - original creditor - and placed with Alegis Group LP for servicing. This is strange? I have not had this account show up on CRs in the past - and only my current and past addresses are listed on the CRs, no wrong addresses listed.
Not so strange. I think others on this board has had problems with that same agency. Your letter sounds exactly the same like chelechele's post with subject Chaudhry v. Gallerizzo Alegis/Sherm just posted a few days ago. Read the post; it may be helpful.
Re: Re: Please help! Sherman appears to be playing games with finding what they can get away with in intimidating alleged debtors on debts that are old, past SOL, possibly misidentified, etc. FDCPA clearly states what they must include in a "first communication". They have not, thereby not notifying you of your legal rights. The specific legally required disclosures would also tell you what they have here failed to do. You clearly requested validation, they claim they are requesting it, yet they are threatening to continue collection even while they are awaiting it, again in clear violation. Their claim that you should contact them if you don't want this to happen sidesteps their responsibility to validate before collecting, and throws it back in your court. For the amount of money involved, and the likely age of the debt, do you actually think it is actually their intent to obtain and send validation?
Re: Re: Re: Please help! No, I don't think they intend to provide validation - nor do I think they can validate. Under ordinary circumstances (i.e. not being in the process of applying for a mortgage), I would fight them, beginning with a 2nd validation letter. I really need to think about this over the next day or so and decide what the best step is.
Re: Re: Please help! They may be playing a numbers game: Send out intimidating collection letters, to anyone in an area based on some database of addresses, and see who pays. The debts are purchased cheap, so its all profit, but not if they actually validate or have to locate the proper party. So to deflect validation requests, word the demand letters to discourage them, with some verbage to hang a bona fide error" defense on if they have to. ("Your honor, we may not have included the exact required language, but this was not our first letter." Or "We graciously said the consumer could contact us in 15 days if he didn't want continued collection, and we even marked the account in dispute.") They are notorious for providing affidavits instead of actual validation, which generally state that some employee certifies that they have personal knowledge that they bought the debt, but to an uninformed consumer, and in response to a validation request, appear to be a claim by their employee that they know the debt is valid. Since they don't then send any actual validation, this is what they have sent and claimed is validation, citing a court case where the defendent actually did provide validation as justification that they have no other legal duty. As you are seeing, if you sent 20 people with your name a demand that they pay an alleged debt, probably several of them would consider paying whether they owed it or not, if they were buying a house and the threat of credit damage at that time would be severe. They know this, and it may be the only real leverage they have on a debt past SOL, and likely even past the 7 year CRA reporting time. On the other hand, if the debt is cheap enough, the temptation to turn cheap lead into gold may apply.
Re: Re: Re: Please help! Have you had any preliminary talks with the mortgage lenders where they might have run your CR's? This would explain why the CA came out of the woodwork, because they know they can play their games and you will fold because of the mortgage application!
Re: Re: Re: Re: Please help! Yes, I have two inquiries on two of my reports from Jan 2004 when the mortgage co did a pre-approval, after signing the contract for the house to be built. Since Jan of 2004, no reports have been pulled related to a mortgage. I've also looked over all three reports to see if any inquiries had been done by Sherman, Alegis, OSI or any unknown CAs over the past year that would trigger them sending the letter. I don't see where any inq were done.
The more I read about Sherman and Alegis, etc., the more I'm starting to think I should go ahead and settle the $181 debt before they send it to the CRAs. Any advice from anyone on how I should word the accompanying letter to say that by cashing enclosed check, you agree that debt is paid in full and will not report to CRAs? And would such letter be legally binding?
Re: Re: Re: Please help! CAs can have the CRAs contact them when there is activity on a consumer's credit report. They seem to believe this sort of communication is not covered by FCRA, since it is neither a PRM or other credit report.
Re: Re: Re: Please help! Quote from newspaper article on CAMCO, where this type of collection appeared to be practiced: "Sworn statements from former employees and consumers provided the basis for the new charges. According to former employees, CAMCO frequently attempted to collect debt not from the original debtor but from anyone with a similar name whom collectors could browbeat into paying."
Re: Re: Re: Please help! If the debt is from more than 7 years ago, they cannot legally put it on your credit report, regardless of what they are claiming they will do. If this debt is recent enough to put on your credit report, it sounds like it cannot be your account. If the debt is not actually yours, and you pay them, there is no guarantee they will not in the process screw up your credit report, at a time when it is most likely to cost you either a home or a higher interest rate, and having paid them you have in effect acknowledged a debt you do not owe, giving you little leverage to remove it as "not yours", or to sue them for damages. You are assuming you are dealing with an honorable, competent, law-abiding outfit. You are also assuming you can negotiate, and will get a written agreement in response to an offer to pay, and that having made an agreement, it will be followed in good faith, with no "accidental" erroneous reporting along the way. Consider this scenario: You are a debt collector. You dunn 20 people, one of whom as far as you know might be the right party, only because they have about the right name and live in the area the original debtor lived in. You are not sure who is the proper party, since your debt information is incomplete, and for what you have paid for this old debt, pennies on the dollar, it's not worth your time and money to get the original data, which would cost you half of what you expect to collect. You get settlement offers from several recipients. In response, to clinch the payments, and since arguably each responder has "acknowledged" that this is his debt (although logically at most one could be) you put your tradeline on each party offering payment. Why? Why not? You can now be sure that each will pay you to get it off, and that none of them will back out. If they later claim what you did was erroneous reporting, you can as a defense offer that you thought they had admitted the debt was theirs. Its their own fault! In fact, you can report anything to the CRAs with no liability, since it is only on the consumer disputing thru the CRAs, if you "verify", do you have any legal liability at all. If any party disputes, just don't verify, and focus on the rest. No party knows about the others, or is likely to. Its cheap and effective. You may get paid for your debt, or even paid more than once! In game theory terms, heads I win, tails you loose. No agreement is worth the paper its written on if the party on the other side has no inclination to follow it.
Re: Re: Re: Please help! If the letter was mailed to your mom's address, where you haven't lived for 7 years, and was from an account that you had 9 years ago, and your mom is still there to receive it and forward it, you would think that Sprint, or any CA getting the account in the intervening period would have been able to locate you the same way. Yet "somehow" they didn't. This implies that neither Sprint, nor any of the other CAs until now, considered your mom's address to be the address of the debtor. Somehow, only this JDB managed to find you after all these years, 9 years later, at the same address that you think your phone account was at, which presumably Sprint had and was passed along with the debt! They must be very smart and everyone else is very, very stupid! Alternatively, this "debt" is entirely unrelated to the account you had in 1996, in which case it is not yours.
