How should one handle collection activity that has not (yet?) been reported to the CRA's??? Should I just ignore old collection letters that are 6 months to 2 years old and hope that the CA's don't report? Afterall, I don't want to rujuvenate any further collection activity if they have put the account aside. Should I ask for validation and then make a pay off offer if they should validate? I"m leaning toward ignoring these unreported collections. Opinions?
i would venture to say that if you keep ignoring them, you will find them on your credit report one day. i have the same situation. everytime i have been contacted, i send a validation letter and they go away. if you do recieve proper validation (which seems rare), you can negotiate payment in exchange for no reporting to any of your credit reports...get it in writing!! maybe some gurus will weigh in...
goldhummin... if you receive partial validation, dispute it immediately... while the board was down there was a major discussion on this topic on another board... unfortunately, some case law shows that if the consumer receives what the CA considers to be validation, and doesn't dispute it, irregardless of whether the CA can produce validation of the ORIGINAL debt, the CAs won because the consumer's failure to dispute the validation created a new "Account Stated" which doesn't need to have the base account proven to be enforced. I suggest as thorough as an auditing as you can do, if it will take you a while to do that, then get out an immediate dispute, and emphasize that as soon as you have completed your thorough review of their incomplete validation you will have a more thorough dispute of their claims.
Thanks so much. This is great info. I'll go search for the discussion on the board everyone jumped over to for the past week.
jam, i'm confused. are you saying to send the CA your dispute if you recieve any attempt at validation? as for the thorough audit, how do you go about doing that? on the initial letter that the CA sent to me, there was the prinicipal amount and then $1000 worth of fees (just listed as "collection fees"). how do you audit that? also, what board was everyone on while CN was down?
