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So I purchased a web hosting package about 2 years ago, but decided not to keep my monthly subscription after 30 days - I phoned up my bank and told them to cancel the direct debit. However, last month I get an email from some obscure company and tells me I've got a bill of £110. Essentially they've been billing me for a service that I haven't touched for years, and that I had specifically cancelled through my bank. Maybe I should have cancelled through the company directly, but surely they could have figured it out after the direct debits stopped going through? -- Also, what's the legality in terms of debt collectors suing minors? I'm under 18, so surely they can't go ahead with any legal action? I've responded to their emails, but they ignore me. Then - a few months later - they said a repeat of the initial mail demanding a payment or risk legal action. Margaret Thatcher fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Nov 13, 2014 |
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Nov 13, 2014 19:30
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You are probably not liable, but withholding payment from them without telling them is kind of a dick move.
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Nov 13, 2014 19:37
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Hey holy poo poo I’ve already had an agency admit a mistake and have something stricken from all three bureaus. About to get it in writing. If you have a cable company in Nebraska, this apparently happens all the time (where they report your paid account as having gone to collections, when it never did). Now my two largest creditors have agencies telling me that they collect for the institutions directly (hospital and a university), and are not authorized to negotiate on the debt beyond 10-20%. What’s happening here. One said I could send them any settlement offer and they would pass it to the hospital. All the items on my credit report are valid, and the amounts are reasonable. I just want to pay and be done. They’re saying they don’t buy debt, and just collect it. Truth or lies?
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Nov 13, 2014 22:38
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agarjogger posted:They’re saying they don’t buy debt, and just collect it. Truth or lies? Totally possible, it's called "assigning" the debt to a collector and it happens all the time.
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Nov 13, 2014 23:27
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agarjogger posted:Hey holy poo poo I’ve already had an agency admit a mistake and have something stricken from all three bureaus. About to get it in writing. If you have a cable company in Nebraska, this apparently happens all the time (where they report your paid account as having gone to collections, when it never did). Yeah, this happens. As far as your credit is concerned it's actually a really good thing since the "lender" still owns the debt. It happened to me with a $1K student loan when I ran into financial problems. If you can manage to work something out with them, it won't end up as a bad debt in collections. The 10-20% thing, there's really no way to be sure if that's their hardline stance. All you can do is try to negotiate, I really don't think it will hurt to try to settle at least once for more of a "discount" than that. I would call the hospital and university's financial depts. and make sure they are indeed working with that collector and you're not getting tricked by a CA into paying them for a written-off debt. If it has been written off 80-90% settlement is pretty ridiculous. I know it seems paranoid but collectors do some shady (and illegal) poo poo sometimes.
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Nov 13, 2014 23:59
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I have a rookie question that I doubt justifies its own thread. I'm a 27 year old Australian male, after two years of employment fuckery I'm finally on the initially-interviewed-for 25 hour per week contract, but in a combined $5297.39 of debt. Two of the sums are rental debt, $1608.62 and $1788.57, the remaining $1900 is from a compounded phone bill that was initially cut off at $300 four years ago. My contracted income is $522pw before tax (couldn't tell you after tax because I regularly work extra hours and there's no rhyme or reason to overtime rates at my workplace), my expenditures are $255pw for rent with all utilities included, $50pw of food, and $30pw for sweet sweet nicotine and prepaid phone credit. It's literally the first time since 2012 I've had a known baseline livable income (I made a whole financial year on nine grand), so after some squatting and some homelessness and becoming emaciated, I'm perfectly fine with keeping a roof over my head and budgeting for the rest of my income to get me debt free as soon as possible. I used to have hobbies and projects that I'd like to return to but I feel like I can't justifiably with that amount of money in the wake of my survival. What I want to know is if it's a good idea to consolidate the three debts through one of those agencies that run suspiciously non-predatory late night commercials. My goal in life is to own real estate before I die, I just don't want to shoot myself in the foot on that eventually happening, even if I have to come at it from an unconventional angle. Selling all three debts to one place and repaying them seems smarter than chipping away individually, but I am poorly educated in these and other matters.
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Dec 8, 2014 09:49
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Why would consolidating help? Save up money and settle the smaller debt. Then do the same with the second smallest. And then with the largest. Debt consolidating is a joke; the only way to get out of your debt is to pay it off.
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Dec 8, 2014 17:35
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This one might be a change of pace. A buddy of mine used me as a reference for a few things over the past several years, and recently I've been getting calls looking for him. I am assuming it is creditors, however they refuse to identify their company name or the reason for the call so I've been just passing it on to him. Lately the calls have gotten much more frequent, even though I've told them I'm not him, never been his number, etc. How do i make them actually stop calling me?
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Dec 9, 2014 21:06
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Shooting Blanks posted:This one might be a change of pace. The last time I was getting calls like that for someone else, specifically mentioning the FDCPA put a pretty quick stop to them.
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Dec 9, 2014 23:31
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skipdogg posted:The laws are different for the Original Creditor vs. a Debt Collection Agency. The Original Creditor (AMEX) has a lot more leeway than a 3rd party debt collector. Generally the FDCPA doesn't apply to the Original Creditor (AMEX). This has me a bit concerned. Right now, I'm dealing with a small claims suit for an old credit card, with some law firm initiating the suit on the OC's behalf. A year ago, a different law firm tried to sue on behalf of the credit card company, but the case wound up being dismissed without prejudice for lack of sufficient evidence, if I can recall. So far, the OC lawyer's bringing to court a signed affidavit from a "litigation specialist" attesting to their personal knowledge of the company's record keeping methods and the validity of the single-page account statement showing the account balance and a copy of the cardholder agreement, but not much else. In fact, these guys managed to pull two account statements from different dates showing the same balance, but different past due amounts. Normally, the magistrate court wouldn't accept signed affidavits (only live witnesses who can actually attest to the validity of the debt, AFAIK), but my state (GA) apparently just adopted federal evidence rules that allow for affidavits in lieu of live witnesses. That's got me concerned, because if they can use a single piece of paper, I have no idea what argument I could use to persuade the court to quash this. I've already spoken to two lawyers. One said he'd argue against the affidavit based on technical issues (although he didn't go into detail about what those technicalities might be). The other recommended settling the debt, but without any substantial cash to confidently make an offer with, I'd think they'd just laugh in my face and filet me with a judgment. I tried doing some research on my own, but legal matters are about as unfathomable to me as a philosophical treatise on Socrates. UPDATE: Showed up to court, met with the lawyer, turns out lawyer didn't have the proper papers (the signed affidavit) to proceed with the case. Cue voluntary dismissal without prejudice. 90s Solo Cup fucked around with this message at 02:40 on Dec 26, 2014 |
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Dec 12, 2014 11:04
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revmoo posted:So National Enterprise Systems has been calling and harassing my father-in-law about an alleged debt of mine. I called them up to get a mailing address to send a cease-and-desist and they flat-out refused to provide a mailing address. I ended up calling them over and over again for about an hour and a half and they kept hanging up immediately seeing me on caller id. Finally I wore them down and they answered the phone and gave it to me. What the gently caress?! At one point a supervisor answered and tried to get lovely with me about calling over and over. It's like dude, I'm not stopping until you provide a mailing address. He hung up and I kept on. So now a similarly named company Enterprise Recovery Systems is calling my workplace and bothering them. I really wish certified letters didn't cost so much to send.
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Dec 12, 2014 14:10
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revmoo posted:So now a similarly named company Enterprise Recovery Systems is calling my workplace and bothering them. I really wish certified letters didn't cost so much to send.
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Dec 12, 2014 15:37
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It's more having to pay to send one every time these shell-game collection agencies shuffle their records.
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Dec 12, 2014 15:49
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revmoo posted:It's more having to pay to send one every time these shell-game collection agencies shuffle their records.
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Dec 16, 2014 20:01
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Hey, I need some advice. My fiancee received a letter stating she was in collections for a phone/internet package for around $200. She called the agency and they said it was for an address she never actually lived at, though a friend of hers did. Fiancee lived with said friend during college so it is definitely possible she could have snuck around and got her SSN and signed up for an account in her name. The friend is being generally unhelpful and denying everything. What's the next step here? Go to the police and present it as identity theft? Try and get in touch with the original company and dispute the validity of the original contract? We've sent a debt validation letter to the agency so that is at least covered.
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Dec 18, 2014 19:56
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Anything else seem to point to identity theft? It might be identity theft, but I could also see a less scrupulous collector trying to follow leads to friends and the like to get paid by someone not on the ball if they could find the info. Pull her credit report from http://www.annualcreditreport.com/ and see what it says and if she recognizes the accounts listed. If she sees accounts she doesn't recognize, start going through the steps at http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/features/feature-0014-identity-theft. If she doesn't see accounts she doesn't recognize, wait to see the outcome of the verification letter and pull together some proof like utility bills or the like showing her living at a different address.
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Dec 18, 2014 21:17
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Harik posted:I've got a quick question: I'm looking at possibly filing a chapter 7 to kill a note on a painfully upside-down house where the servicer is being extremely abusive. (It's way more complex than that but the question is unrelated to the reasons why I'd be filing). If they're being abusive enough to rack up FDCPA violations, they may have solved your money problems for you.
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Dec 18, 2014 21:18
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actionfiasco posted:Hey, I need some advice. My fiancee received a letter stating she was in collections for a phone/internet package for around $200. She called the agency and they said it was for an address she never actually lived at, though a friend of hers did. Fiancee lived with said friend during college so it is definitely possible she could have snuck around and got her SSN and signed up for an account in her name. The friend is being generally unhelpful and denying everything. What's the next step here? Go to the police and present it as identity theft? Try and get in touch with the original company and dispute the validity of the original contract? We've sent a debt validation letter to the agency so that is at least covered. Call the original creditor and find out what you can from them. Confirm what address it was for. If it's not your address, see if you can get information on how the bill was paid (I assume it was paid a few times before it went bad).
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Dec 19, 2014 02:36
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I just received a piece of mail that my dad received for me almost 2 years ago. It was from a debt collection agency, saying that I owe almost 2000 dollars (original amount about 1500), to the DOD. I worked for the DOD in 2011, and I received an advance on my pay, but as far as I knew, that was settled. I can't think of anything else this could be related to, and the letter said nothing about what the debt was for. I was out of the country for almost 4 years, and it was impossible for most US entities to send mail to me unless they were going to address it in Chinese. The DOD had my dad's address, they could have sent a bill for any debt there, they didn't. There also hasn't been any mail about this debt since this letter, in February 2013. Complicating things a little more; I have tried multiple times to pull my free credit reports and been denied, first because they couldn't confirm my identity using credit report information...the questions were all things that don't apply to me. So I started thinking my identity may have been stolen. I tried again, and I got a message telling me that I already used my requests. Of course they'll be happy to sell me a loving credit report. My finances are a little tenuous right now; and I went through all that outprocessing crap, and my last paycheck was almost nothing, so that this poo poo wouldn't happen. I'm thinking I should just suck it up and buy a credit report to see what's going on. Where's the best place to do this, without signing up for credit monitoring or any other bullshit? Also...I'm not planning on taking out any loans for at LEAST 3 years, maybe never. Should I just ignore it? When would the clock on this have started? If I contact the DOD to try to find out what the gently caress is going on will it reset? VideoTapir fucked around with this message at 01:54 on Dec 25, 2014 |
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Dec 24, 2014 22:12
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Looks like this is the general credit/debt thread, so here's my question. I just got an Experian credit report from freecreditreport, and there's a $13K loan on there that isn't mine. It's currently being paid off on time, so it's not loving up my credit (I guess), but still. What do I do? Call up Experian to file a dispute?
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Dec 27, 2014 05:30
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Neeevermind, got an attorney. Bleh.
Kodilynn fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Dec 29, 2014 |
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Dec 29, 2014 14:57
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So, Comcast hosed me for $32. I've been trying to call Comcast's customer support but the line keeps dropping, so going to post here in the interim. We moved states and cancelled our Comcast service. I cancelled in person at the Comcast office and returned the modem. This was in October, and everything seemed peachy. Fast forward to today, and I get a letter in the mail from a collection agency stating I owe $32.33. I managed to talk to Comcast customer support for a few minutes (before getting dropped repeatedly), and apparently they charge a final billing at the end of the month...after the account has been closed. I never received an email or letter about this final bill. Because I was enrolled in auto-pay, I never received letters from them anyway. However, apparently they delete auto-pay credit card numbers as soon as the account is closed. So basically they: closed my account, deleted my credit card, billed me, never contacted me and now turned it over to a third party collection agency. They didn't tell me at time of closing (in person!) that there was more payments either. What's my best course of action? Should I keep trying to reach Comcast collections to accept a payment and delete the writeoff, as well as invalidate the third-party collection claim? Or is that a waste of time? I have no problem paying the debt, no matter how lovely it is that they never contacted me. It's only thirty bucks after all. But I'm not sure how to proceed since they involved a third party without contacting me first. My main goal is to reduce credit score impact, but I have a feeling it is hosed now no matter what I do. 
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Dec 30, 2014 22:30
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I can't help you, but thanks for mentioning this. I closed my gf's account in June and received a refund check in July and the balance was zero at the end of July...but I better go check to make sure they aren't loving around. We do have emails stating that billing was concluded but who knows how that'll stand up.
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Dec 30, 2014 22:41
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Comcast pulled that poo poo with me when I canceled my account way back ~2004. I don't believe it's ever shown up on my credit report, but then I did spend most of a week trying to get through their lovely customer support so I could yell at someone. I never yell at people, especially customer service people who usually have no control over what caused the issue and deal with enough lovely customers mad at them for no reason. But I yelled after I spent literally four hours on long-distance calls because Comcast didn't have their poo poo together. tl;dr - This may or may not ever end up on a credit report, depending on how well Comcast knows what they're doing on that particular day.
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Dec 31, 2014 03:49
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null gallagher posted:Looks like this is the general credit/debt thread, so here's my question. I just got an Experian credit report from freecreditreport, and there's a $13K loan on there that isn't mine. It's currently being paid off on time, so it's not loving up my credit (I guess), but still. What do I do? Call up Experian to file a dispute?
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Dec 31, 2014 07:01
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DarkHorse posted:Comcast pulled that poo poo with me when I canceled my account way back ~2004. I don't believe it's ever shown up on my credit report, but then I did spend most of a week trying to get through their lovely customer support so I could yell at someone. Good to know, thanks. I finally got through to someone in Comcast's collections dept, after a few additional hours of playing customer support roulette, and payed off the overdue bill. I was told it would never appear on my credit and they would call off the collection agency. We'll see. In the mean time I'm going to send a verification of debt to the collection agency and keep an eye on my credit reports in case I need to dispute. Sigh. As if I didn't hate Comcast enough already.
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Dec 31, 2014 16:33
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I want to negotiate a pay for delete for a medical bill that my insurance didn't fully cover that's been sent to collections (before I had a chance to pay), but I would like to do this by mail. Is there anything special I need to do (certified letter, notary)? Or can I just mail them a letter requesting to pay in full in return for delete. Also I was just informed by another company that a mysterious debt popped up for that they don't do pay for delete. What should I do in this situation? It's already 3 years old. Arus fucked around with this message at 00:40 on Jan 3, 2015 |
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Jan 2, 2015 20:55
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Arus posted:I want to negotiate a pay for delete for a medical bill that my insurance didn't fully cover that's been sent to collections (before I had a chance to pay), but I would like to do this by mail. Is there anything special I need to do (certified letter, notary)? Or can I just mail them a letter requesting to pay in full in return for delete. I have read online that its different for medical debts, but when I asked in this thread a few months ago, no one replied to me....
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Jan 3, 2015 02:38
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SiGmA_X posted:Pay for delete isn't very common - its not allowed by the credit reporting agencies. I had 0 luck with it on 2 debts, both places (US Bank and a local collector) said only the most scummy agencies will do it. Don't count on it for medical debts either. I had 5 very small medical debts with 3 different agencies. No pay for delete.
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Jan 3, 2015 03:36
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I had one company do it for me on a small medical debt that they hadn't reported to the credit agencies yet, I think the only reason they agreed to it was because it was small and I paid in full. I wasn't aware at all that the big three don't actually allow that, I just knew it's not illegal.
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Jan 3, 2015 03:47
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Scenty posted:Don't count on it for medical debts either. I had 5 very small medical debts with 3 different agencies. No pay for delete.
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Jan 3, 2015 03:48
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So followup to my previous issues, it looks like this company is definitely coming after me for student loan debt. I went to ITT tech about 12 years ago and immediately dropped out when one of my professors threw away my final. There were some other problems at the time (like them being raided by the feds) and I quit ASAP when I realized it was a scam. Now, this collections agency is preparing to garnish my wages for an approximate 20k. I don't in any way believe I owe this. I thought all this poo poo was far behind me and my credit is well over 740 with no delinquencies reported. However, this company, legitimate or not, has documentation showing I owe this amount. I don't have any receipts from years past as I had a house fire and lost everything. I didn't realize the extent that student loans are exempt from debt collection laws, and I just found out today that I don't even get a day in court to defend myself against these garnishments. What is the right way to go about this? I don't care how much I have to spend to fight these guys, but I also want to take a pragmatic approach. Should I find a lawyer in my state, or are there nationwide specialists out there that can assist with these negotiations?
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Jan 5, 2015 23:43
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revmoo posted:So followup to my previous issues, it looks like this company is definitely coming after me for student loan debt. I went to ITT tech about 12 years ago and immediately dropped out when one of my professors threw away my final. There were some other problems at the time (like them being raided by the feds) and I quit ASAP when I realized it was a scam. Federal loans, or private loans (Assuming Federal since they apparently don't need to go to court to garnish your wages)? Why don't you believe you owe this; did you pay the debt previously? If you're going to say that ITT Tech failed to give you a good education for the money spent, you probably should have taken action against ITT Tech like 10-12 years ago; I'm not sure arguing the education was bad is going to have any bearing on the money you borrowed from the government to give to ITT Tech unfortunately. Might be able to argue that the government shouldn't have allowed ITT Tech to be on the list of approved institutions, but that seems a pretty big stretch. There are other ways to reduce student loan payments like Income-Based Repayment or depending what you do you could qualify for Public Service Loan Forgiveness. The Student Loan thread might be a good place to look for info as well.
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Jan 6, 2015 00:19
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revmoo posted:So followup to my previous issues, it looks like this company is definitely coming after me for student loan debt. I went to ITT tech about 12 years ago and immediately dropped out when one of my professors threw away my final. There were some other problems at the time (like them being raided by the feds) and I quit ASAP when I realized it was a scam. That really sucks. There should be a way to object to the garnishment though, depending on your state. However, the judgment most likely has cured and diminished your options for fighting the underlying case. Unless you can reopen the judgment (not likely), you'll be dealing with the garnishment for awhile. This is a private student loan, not federal, right? If you actually paid this off at the time, regardless of your personal retention of any records, there is probably a way for you to get proof of payment from the loan servicer. This may involve hiring an attorney to mad dog your lender for production, but even lawyerbucks pale in comparison to a $20k garn. If any of you guys are curious about what this is like from the other side: on the subject of long term garnishments, I got a call at my office today from a guy we'd been garnishing for years. He finally paid off a $15k debt, working at a grocery store no less. I'm a paralegal, not a collector, and I generally have no contact with defendants. Dude's payroll met the stated balance but decided they were just going to keep withholding until they heard from us, and they thought it would be a good idea to set him loose on me by giving him my direct line. Dude was rightfully pissed until I very tactfully and professionally agreed with him that the situation was bullshit and ran his release documents mid-conversation. Had that guy actually called the number he was supposed to, he would have likely gotten the idiot collector assigned to his file, who would have likely given him a big runaround while IMing me in textspeak about what to tell him was going on with his file, and who would have then relayed an inaccurate summary of my information back to the guy. In retrospect I can't fault the guy for not wanting to deal with that. tl;dr your payroll and collection agency rep don't know what the gently caress they are doing. You are cupped in the hands of apathy and idiocy. Hope this helps.
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Jan 6, 2015 07:05
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Hello everyone, I had some old tickets I never paid a while back ago because I was dumb, and I noticed the debt pop up. I sent out a Debt Verification letter to the collection agency that is trying to collect the debt, but they didn't send back anything after 40 days. What are my next steps in dealing with this, do I just contact the credit agencies and dispute it?
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Jan 9, 2015 19:26
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I got a debt collection call for an ambulance ride that I had over the summer. Which is weird, as I, after I moved, never received any bills forwarded to me so I could pay it off. (The debt's legitimate, BTW - no contesting that.) When I called the ambulance company to see why I didn't get any bills, I found that they weren't forwarded on to me at all. However, they did just let me pay them directly, for the full amount, as it was early enough in the collections process. Which I did. And got verification from AMR that yes - I paid it off in full, and no - i do not owe any more money to either them or the collection agency. Should I hear any more from the collection agency after that? They did say that it'd take a day or two to have the information sent over and processed by them. (The ambulance company was AMR and the collection agency was Credence Resource Management.) Qu Appelle fucked around with this message at 21:32 on Jan 9, 2015 |
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Jan 9, 2015 21:25
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Veskit posted:Hello everyone, Yes, dispute, while saving the return recipets from your initial verification ( always keep the green slips). If they verify the cra without verifying with you, that's a violation.
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Jan 9, 2015 23:05
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LorneReams posted:Yes, dispute, while saving the return recipets from your initial verification ( always keep the green slips). If they verify the cra without verifying with you, that's a violation. Is this how I dispute it or is there an easier/better/different way? http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0151-disputing-errors-credit-reports
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Jan 10, 2015 01:33
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Veskit posted:Is this how I dispute it or is there an easier/better/different way? I like doing it online directly through the free annual credit report site. https://www.annualcreditreport.com/index.action
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Jan 11, 2015 09:50
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LorneReams posted:I like doing it online directly through the free annual credit report site. I've used up my free ones months ago so I'll have to request all 3 credit agencies and pay to have the report i guess then file the disputes online. Still cheaper than 3 certified mailings though and probably better.
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Jan 11, 2015 20:41
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