I had a loan that defaulted in 94. I never paid a dime on it. There is not reference to this debt on any of my credit reports. Furthermore, the debt is far beyond the SOL. Yet there is a collection agency that has recently starting calling in an attempt to collect on this debt. They have also made 4 hard inquires with 2 of the CRAs. First, I have opted out with the CRAs. Next, I sent a letter based of a form letter to the CA outling the SOL and that they cease contacting me. Been 3 days no new calls. Hooray!!! Are they in violation of any laws? Will this SOL letter action prohibit them from making hard inquiries in the future? Is there info or actions I am missing.
It is not clear if your "cease and desist all contact" will prevent credit report inquiries, but should they do so on a repeated and frequent basis in an effort to "poision" your report, you might sue, arguing that since they were not trying to "locate" you (they already knew how to do that), they cannot legally contact you, they cannot legally sue (past SOL), they cannot legally report negative information on your credit report (past reporting period), there is no remaining way they can legally collect, so their inquiries were not done for the purpose of collecting, but only to harass, damage your FICO scores, and try to illegally get around the FCRA negative information reporting period limit. They are more likely to just sell it off to some other CA, but if the above happens, talk to an attorney with FCRA and FDCPA experience. Should you need to deal with them, you might want only your attorney to be in contact, since any direct contact to you would then be additional violations. You do, however, want to keep your documentation that shows that this is past SOL. Some CAs might try to sue anyway, reaging and claiming it is within SOL, or claiming you made some payment or took some other action that reset SOL. Since there are CAs who have pulled this, be on your guard and prepared to use an attorney to pursue the FDCPA and FCRA violations, since what they would be looking for is a default judgement. If after SOL, and after the reporting period has passed, a CA can continue to collect following a cease and desist, it would render the FDCPA provision for a cease and desist meaningless. Note: I am not an attorney. The above is my opinion of where to draw the line.
