I received a letter at the end of October that threatened to sue me over an old (~4 years) CC debt if I didn't respond within 30 days of the notice. They didn't serve me a summons, this was just a regular letter. I sent them a letter requesting validation and that was about 6 weeks ago and I have yet to get a response. What should my next step be? Since the alleged debt is still within the SOL I want to be careful, but if they haven't responded don't they have to remove the tradeline from my CR? Thanks for the help, this is a wonderful place.
Until you dispute thru the CRA, they don't have to do anything. To get it removed, you dispute thru the CRA when they have not yet sent validation, in which case they should not "verify" the CRA dispute before obtaining and sending you validation. Whether they will follow the law is another matter. And once they send you validation, they can both reinsert or verify to the CRA, and proceed with their threatened suit.
Thanks for the response. I haven't heard from them so I guess that's a good thing. The debt is ~ 4 years old so the SOL is approaching so maybe I should just lie low and hope that the SOL passes. How much is the charge-off affecting my credit? From what I understand, it may actually be helping me at this point due to the history of the account and the fact that the charge off is so old. I haven't had a late payment on anything in over 2 years but there are several (10-15) collections on my CR. I'm hoping that my score is starting to steadily creep up.
Unfortunately, there isn't a requirement that they *EVER* respond to a validation request... (in most jurisdictions) The only requirement is that they cease all collection activity after they receive a timely DV, until after they've obtained and mailed the validation to the consumer.
That's one of the jurisdictions; there's also one case that I know of in one circuit where failure to provide validation was a false and misleading representation that they would obtain the validation.
It is rather amazing that the FDCPA validation requirement hinges semantically on the requirement on the CA to notify the consumer about disputing and requesting validation, and only thru that notification language do the courts require that the CA actually do anything. Requiring that they SAY they will do something could mean any of the following, depending on the court: 1) They only have to say it; 2) They have to both say it and do it within a particular period of time; 3) They have to both say it and do it, within some "reasonable" time period; 4) They have to say it, but maybe do only some of it; 5) They have to say it, but they may never get around to actually doing anything.
