Please any opinions would be wonderful and much appreciated. Long story short...7 paid medical collections through same CA...They reported 6 wrong as paid settlement and the seventh an incorrect amount. I have worked on this letter for 3 days and have cut and modified parts of the validation and knockout letters to match my situation. What do you think I need to do to improve this. Accounts are 2+ years old five under $70. ________________________________ I am writing you regarding several notices on my credit report. It seems as though I have paid accounts with your offices and that your company has deemed it necessary to report this listing on my credit file. This letter is to inform you that I paid this account under duress and prior to knowing my rights as provided by the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. I paid this debt because I was afraid of the pending lawsuit you had filed and I was unfamiliar with the FDCPA. In doing so, you obviously failed to realize that the Doctrine of Estoppel directly applies to this type of situation. Here is what the Doctrine of Estoppel is and how it applies to your violations of it. In order for the doctrine of estoppel to apply, the party of the first part (you, Mutual Hospital) must make some statement or engage in some conduct upon which I have relied and acted upon which later proved to be to my detriment or prejudice. When I paid you, I relied upon the belief that you would do the honorable thing and remove your nasty and derogatory comments from my credit bureau files which you not only failed to do but actually changed my listing to paid settlement/Legally paid for half which is a far worse rating in the eyes of any potential future creditors. In your communications with me you told me that you would update my credit reports as soon as I had paid the debt to you. Quite naturally, I assumed and relied upon your statement to that effect to mean that you would mark the account as "paid as agreed" or even quite possibly remove it entirely. Now that I am aware of my rights as provided by State and Federal Law, I am now disputing the fact that your agency ever had any legal right to collect on this alleged debt and that your agency has any legal right to report this account on my credit file. I have attached a request for complete validation (not verification) on this alleged account and you are instructed to fill it out, attach copies of all requested documentation and return it to me within 30 days from your receipt of this letter. If you cannot provide complete validation as provided by law, then your offices are instructed to IMMEDIATELY request full deletion of this account from my master credit file and all 3 major credit bureauâ??s. You are also instructed to send me a copy of such request for deletion via US Mail. If you fail to respond at all, I will turn this matter over to my legal counsel for suit, file complaints with the Better Business Bureau, the Federal Trade Commission and our State Attorney Generalâ??s Office. I am quite confident that both you and a court of law will agree that such is a perfectly reasonable assumption for an average debtor to make. And so upon that assumption I agreed to pay the debt and in fact did so on whereupon you actually worsened my credit bureau scores for the last two years and that was most definitely to my detriment and prejudice and provided me with grounds to sue you for the full amount paid plus attorney fees, court costs and whatever additional punitive damages a jury might award. I am quite well aware that you have a contractual agreement with the credit bureaus which covers this problem and supposedly prevents you from compliance with my demands but a contract which is in violation of the law is null and void and of no force and effect whatever and therefore cannot be enforced either by you or upon you. Your so-called contract with the credit bureaus will not protect you for your willful violation of my rights which are protected by the Doctrine of Estoppel. While you may think that I have no right of private action due to the way FCRA is worded, let me hasten to assure you that such beliefs are quite ungrounded and false. That point has been vividly pointed out by the ruling of the U.S. 9th Cir. Ct. of Appeals in the case of Nelson v Chase, March 3, 2002, in which the court pointed out that Section 1681s-2(b) of the Fair Credit Reporting Act creates a cause of action for a consumer against a furnisher of erroneous credit information. But my pending suit against you will not be about FDCPA nor FCRA but about how you have damaged me after I acted in good faith in dealing with you.
