I had a credit card with MBNA. I fell behind in the payments when the balance was about $2800. I agreed to pay them $60 a month. After one year the balance had gone up to $2900. I wasn't getting anywhere so I stopped paying them in 1998. The account was given over to North Am.Capital and then about 2 years later it was turned over to a collection attorney. The attorney's sent me a subpoena and I foolishy ignored it since I didn't know what to do. Subsequently they froze my checking account. That was in 2000. The account was "un-frozen" a year later and again I foolishly assumed that it was over. I began hearing from the collection attny's about a month ago offering a settlement of $3700. Since my last payment was in 1998 I sent them a letter telling them the SOL was Sept. 1998. Now they mailed me by regular mail (not certified, reg. or even marked PERSONAL - CONFIDENTIAL) an Information Subpoena. They are not only asking for info about me, but my husband as well. They want our tax returns. Do I have to respond? Do I have to give them info about husband's employer? Does anyone have any suggestions about how to handle this? The subpoena says I can go to jail!!
I hope for your sake that you're not dealing with Wolpoff and Abramson!! We have gone through over 2 years of PURE hell with them. We had 2 MBNA accounts that went to them. One started out at about $4500 and the other at $6500 ($11,000 total). By the time we were all finished, we had paid W & A about $14,000. Because my husband was transferred, we HAD to sell our house and buy one in another state. Since we changed states, I was able to cash in my state teacher's retirement. Our plan was to use it as downpayment on our house. We ended up using the bulk of it to pay W & A to get them off our backs. Even when we offered fairly large hunks of money, they wouldn't bulk one iota. At any given time, they'll offer a couple of percent off for a large payment, but that's it. This is how they treated us and we actually made regular payments over a 2 year period. They kept tacking interest and other various "collection" fees onto our balance even though we were paying them regularly. I TRULY believe their goal is to keep you paying them FOREVER!!!!!!!!!!! They are the lowest of the low when it comes to collection agents. I have 1" files on each of my accounts with them containing all my correspondence with MBNA, W&A, the National Arbitration Foundation, etc. I gave all of my info to our closing attorney and even he couldn't get them to budge. We had to settle for a 5% down, 8.875% interest rate loan with a house payment double what we had before moving, and I now have zero retirement--but we got W&A off our backs. We just couldn't afford to fight them anymore. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if Wolpoff and Abramson is who you have to deal with, you're better off getting out from under them as soon as you possibly can, no matter what it takes. Wolpoff and Abramson-----THEY ARE THE MOST EVIL OF THE EVIL!!!!!!!!!!!!! Good luck, debtchoked
My particular "devils" are Cohen & Slamowitz. Without going through all the details of my own sad story, it has been my experience that Collection Attorney's are much harder to deal with than Collection Agencies. I just hate having to give these guys even one penny. I have paid and paid and paid on this account since 1993, but could never come up with more than either a minimum payment or less, so I was just spinning my wheels. I would never have been able to pay them off (since I was struggling with over $100,000 in business debts.) I should have decalred BK, but I thought I would be able to work my way out of debt. Except for this last debt I have!! The thing is that this debt has nearly doubled since I made my last payemnt in 1998. Dealing with these people is like dealing with a loan shark!
I think you're right--They ARE loan sharks!!!!! I had never thought about it quite like that. At least loan sharks are up front about the huge amount of interest they're going to charge you. Evil collection attorneys hide it and keep it just this side of legal by calling the money they keep tacking on "administrative fees," "processing fees," or some other lame euphemism. I really feel for you HMI. I hop you can find some way out of it all. I don't know how I would have handled the situation better. My credit scores have been hovering around the 550-580 mark for the past 3 years. If I would have declared bankruptcy maybe they would have dipped for awhile, but I would think that by now they would be back up. Who knows?!? Good Luck. I wish I had some great advice. There are some awesome people on this forum--maybe someone will be able to give you some better advice. debtchoked
Sorry--I meant "hope" not "hop" BTW--If you haven't done so yet, you might want to take Butch up on his offer to email him. Let us all know how things are going. Sometimes it helps to know that you're not by yourself going through hell. When you pull your scores on PG or some other service and they tell you that your scores are "POOR" and in something like the bottom 5% of the country, it can make you feel like a huge loser. Just know that you're not alone.
I've emailed Butch, but haven't heard back yet. In the meantime I'm going to down to the court and see if that first subpoena was actually "served". I'm not being disingenuous, but I truly do not remember signing for anything and I have nothing in my files that shows I did. Things were such a mess back then however, that it is entirely possible that I did. If I did sign for it I suspect I'm SOL (and I don't mean statute of limitations). I never asked for validation and I'm afraid that ship has sailed. And if the judgment is valid the fact the the debt is SOL is a useless defense. I didn't know there were sites like this where help was available. If all the folks out there felt the way I did (helpless, scared, guilt-ridden), I can understand how you tend to make foolish mistakes and thinking - actually hoping is a better word - that if you keep ignoring the phone calls and letters, they will just go away. Considering the debt I had (well over $100,000), I am actually fortunate that I am down to this one last creditor. The past seven years were very hard. I had never been in debt before nor since. My husband & I had to make some very difficult choices. We sold our home and moved into our weekend cabin. We had a garage sale and sold most of our possessions. We canceled our health insurance, our life insurance and liquidated our retirement fund. My husband took a job in a nearby state and commuted 1-1/2hrs each way. We took every dollar we had and doled out payments to all our creditors (including MBNA). We lived on a very strict budget. Most of our debts were business expenses, but since we had been trying to salvage the business we very, very foolishly began putting our business expenses on our personal credit cards. That made us personally responsible. I guess the fact that the credit cards debts piled up because I was using them to pay for employees health insurance, supplies for the office, their salaries, etc. and not for "trips to the mall", vacations, TV's, etc. make it all the harder to give-in to the Cohen & Slamowitz's. I know they paid a couple of cents on the dollar for my debt and now they stand to make a profit of hundreds of percent. Well, I'm just venting now and through this site I know now that I have to deal with situation and perhaps, like you, I will just have to bite the bullet and pay these thieves,but I sure would like to negotiate it down. I'm hoping that Butch has some ideas. Thanks for your concern and I wish you and your husband the best.
