Expert: Creditwrench
Date: 12/22/2007
Subject: Debt Validation

Question
QUESTION: Received letter of debt from one collections agency, sent them a validation letter, no response. Now I have received another letter of debt from and other agency for the same debt. Do I sent another letter? Also, this letter states you can ask for validation, does this mean they will validate it since the first one could not, or the same?

Thank You,

ANSWER: If you sent them your demand for validation within the first 30 days after you received it and they sold or transferred the debt to another agency then you should sue them for violation of FDCPA. Then demand validation of the second one and get ready to sue them too because they will violate as well. Don't let them get by with trampling on your rights under the law.


---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Thank You, for the quick response. I have another question. Should I send a copy of the first letter with all the attachment to the second agency. So they know that the first did not validate the debt and there letter states they are trying to collect for the first agency. At least that is the way they are making it seem. Also should I cite the Spears case and RE: FDCPA on the second letter. I just feel after this that I will get something from another agency and it will just keep going. I guess this what a JDB is. I really appreciate your help and information.

Thank You,

ANSWER: No, I would not send a copy of the first letter with all the attachments to the second agency. The way this is beginning to sound you very well may not be able to sue the second agency for transferring or selling the account to a second agency as I suggested above. I'm doing some further research into that at the present time so I'd advise you to ignore that bit of advice until such a time as I can do my research and determine for certain whether my statement there was correct or not. I'll need some court cases before I can be certain on that point.

If there is any connection between the two then it would be certain that you could not sue as I suggested earlier. If they are connected as would be the case if one were a branch office of the other then you couldn't sue them for the transfer but there may be other grounds for suit if that were the case. And no, I do not advise citing Spears or any other case or even anything about FDCPA in any letter to a collection agency.

They are supposed to be professionals and therefore it is their responsibility to know the law and how it applies to them. It is also their responsibility to know the court cases that support any position they take and if they don't then it is still not of any benefit to you to try to tell them what they are supposed to know as professionals.

You are supposed to be in the position of a lay person in their eyes even though you might even be extremely knowledgeable in the law or maybe even an attorney. Even if you are extremely knowledgeable or even if you are an attorney it is in your best interest to find out what they know rather than to try to teach them what you know. You seem to be a bit uneasy with the thought that this could end up being like the energizer bunny and keep on going and going and going from one agency to the other.

Actually that would be to your advantage because if that did happen and you keep on demanding validation of each of them only to have them send it on to another they just might end up playing around until it runs out of time due to the statute of limitations. So even though it may seem like an endless thing, it just might work out to be to your advantage. In any case, just keep careful records of what happens and if you do that you may end up with some more solid reason(s) to sue them other than what I suggested above which may or may not have been 100% completely correct.

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: I send the second validation letter to the second agency, it has been over 30 days and have not heard a word. Also, they have re-aged the account as of 5/07. Also, see another agency on and other CRA. What can I do to take this off, is this legal for them to use to different names for the same debt to different CRA. Can I dispute this and would sending copies of the validation letters with Certified receipts help because they can not validate. Is there a letter to sent to the CRA stating that these people can not validate and that the SOL may have expired. NEED HELP!

Answer
Sending a validation letter and not hearing anything from them is the common fault you find with all of the so called credit repair web sites and forums out there.

But first of all you should realize that there is no requirement in FDCPA that they do send you anything. They can ignore you completely and there is nothing you can do about it if all you have in your arsenal is what you find all over the Internet. The only real catch is that if you send your validation demand in time they can't legally move foreword with any continued collection activity until they provide the demanded validation. But if they do ignore you and continue trying to collect you have to sue them in a federal court to punish them for their illegal activity.

Some message boards tell you to send them a letter called ESTOPPEL after 30 days. Estoppel basically means to stop doing that which is illegal but it carries no real weight either. After that the message boards and web sites have no further ideas about what you should do and just leave you hanging.

That is why I invented my creditwrench. I know what to do next and I know how to make them toe the mark and I know how to punish them if they fail to do so. Students who follow what I teach win. Although they may have to learn how take their abusers to federal court none who have done that have ever lost. My students will tell you that in their own words. They will explain what their successes have been. You don't even have to call them to find out. All you have to do is listen to our Friday night conference call. The latest call lasted 3 1/2 hours and you can listen to it now.

It is all broken down into 8 segments each less than 1/2 hour long so they load fast and you don't have to wait for the entire file to load.

http://www.creditwrench.com/2007_12_21_archive.html

I can't tell you how to do credit repair the way everybody else does it which is by sending a lot of letters disputing everything you can think of but I can teach you how to make the debt collector take it off for you so you don't have to fool with all that credit repair stuff. Once you get them into federal court they are quite happy to oblige. That's a much better approach in my personal opinion. None of your thoughts about sending letters make much sense.

And what SOL are you talking about that may have expired? There are many types of SOL and my students also learn all about that very quickly. They know that there is one type of SOL for reporting purposes which is a federal SOL and another for the limit on the amount of time within which they must bring their lawsuit which is state law.