question about a debt verification from a collections agency what are my rights?

Question

got a call on june 13 from a collection agency telling me i owe them 6,000. i told time for what? for a sears financial card you opend 6 years ago. I told them 1 i dont have 6k to give you and i need more info. The guy told me to shut up i dont want to hear your belly aching, you have had 5 years to payit. then he told me i have till the end of the day to take care of this or else i would file a lawsuit and take away your paycheck. I hung up the phone! I traced the phone # got the compaines name. A friend told me to write them right away a certified letter providing an undersigned verification of the debt. and change your phone #, and pull your credit--i did and a sears card was charged off about 5 years ago for 3100...note i did have some finacial difficutly with my X. I then got a court summons in last week for 8100. I called this guy up and asked where the verfication is, he laughed sayed he dint have to respond so are you going to pay 6k or go to court for 8100?

Answer 1

Was that phone call the first time you had ever heard from that company? If so, did they send you a dun letter within 5 days of that phone call? - If the answer is No - they violated your rights.

Did you send your debt validation letter within the first 30 days of receiving the first phone call or first letter? - If the answer is Yes, they violated your rights by filing suit (if they in fact did) before they validated with you.

First thing tomorrow, call your county court clerk and ask if there is any law suit filed under your name (you might also check your county court website and look it up too, but check with the clerk just to be sure)

If there is no law suit filed - they have violated your rights again.

Next you need to find out what the statute of limitations (SOL) for collecting is in your state.
If you are out of the SOL for collections in your state, and they had filed a suit, they have violated your rights again by filing on a time barred debt.

If there is indeed a suit filed, you NEED to answer it within the time allowed or they will get a default judgment against you.

If you are out of SOL, include affirmative defense of SOL in your answer.

Look over your credit reports and see if they are listed. If they are, I'm sure they probably have violations listed.

File a countersuit on them, list every violation that they have done.

I would suggest going to the site I've listed and do some reading in the newbie forum and then in a couple of the other forums. Learn what constitutes a violation. Learn the SOL for your state. There is a ton of info on that site, use it.

Answer 2

The advice you are getting is all over the map! Some is terrible.

First start by reading Echo's response.

Understand that when you ask for a validation (NOT a verification....completely differant), the creditor must send this to you.

But in this case, they have decided to simply go to court and sue you. That's why he said they don't need to "validate" the debt with you.

What you need to do before you go to court is file a discovery motion, and demand to see the evidence they have to prove what you owe. This is basically what they will show the judge. If it's not accurate, or does not prove it's your debt, you could have the whole case dismissed. This is difficult without the help of an attorney.


You need to know if this court summons is legit. Call the court and verify it. It's a quick and easy procedure...just give them the case # that should appear on your summons.

If it's legit, then what probably happened is the collection agent finally got around to looking at your case, and discovered that the Statute of Limitations is running out. It probably explains the extremely short time after you were called.

They can violate your FDCA rights all they want, but you will still end up losing this case if you actually owe the money.

So take the time to read the Fair Debt Collections Act and see if you can prove this guy violated any of the provisions in it. From what you mentioned, several were broken. But you need to prove it. I'm not sure you can.

Remember that if you do lose the judgement, you may be able to get the judge to order installment payments. Bring some sort of evidence to show your income/expenses and what you think you afford to pay in monthly payments. If it's reasonable, he may order that instead of allowing the creditor to go after everything at once.

Now if a court case was not issued, and this summons is fake.....OH MY GOD I wish I was a lawyer! I could easily get you several thousand dollars. If that's the case contact me and I'll give you some more advice.

Answer 3

Since you have been served to appear in court, there is not much you can do unless:
1. In your divorce decree, was your ex held responsible for this debt?
2. Did you, or your ex file bankruptcy after the divorce?

First, you could find a way to pay the collection agency in full prior to the court date, saving your credit from have a judgement reported. Judgements can remain on your credit for a minimum of 10yrs up to life. No joke.
Charge-offs however, can be removed in about 7 and the really tricky thing here is that the original creditor, Sears, can hold the charge off for the seven yrs, then the collection agency who now owns the debt can keep it there for their own seven yrs.
For example, the Sears charge-off happened in 2000, but they sold it to the collection agency in 2004. The collection agency starts it's seven yrs in 2004, keeping it on record until 2011, where the Sears charge-off will be removed in 2007. Essentially you get hit twice for the same debt. Now, your being sued and the judgement is going to be number three. All of them are the same debt, but each one lowers your Fico score on their own.
If you can pay this, then you will avoid number 3, and that date will be 2006+ 7 to 10 yrs, making all three of these gone by 2016!
They have already verified the debt, the moment they filed a summons and complaint.
Now, to the questions.
If your husband was ordered to pay this debt, and obviously did not, AND his name is on the Sears account, then he must also be named on the summons. If he was ordered to pay in the divorce, after the trial, you can file a lawsuit against him and file a motion to bring him back into family court and sue him for failure to perform, or contempt of court. When a divorce is granted each party is responsible to hold the other harmless from certain joint debts. If one party does not pay according to the order of divorce decree. then that party is in contempt, IF the other party (you) are harmed (Sears) Once you have been sued and lost, or if you get a loan to payoff the collection agency, prior to suit you can then turn around and sue the ex for what you had to borrow. This will not however fix your credit, but you may recover some of your financial losses.
If one of you or both had filed bk prior to now after the divorce, the debt should have been liquidated through the bk. It is possible, and I have seen this happen more than once, the debt was charged off at sears, sold to a collection agency during a bk proceeding and the discharge of the bk was not relayed to the right agency. If this happened, the suit is not legal and can be thrown out. Be aware, if your ex filed bk and you did not, then your on the hook for the debt, your ex is not responsible for the debt. However, if the divorce decree held the ex responsible, then he/she filed bk, you still may be able to recover a portion of the damages. The 8100.00 they are talking about is the principal debt, plus accrued interest from the last time you made a payment, plus attorney's fees, and costs.

Answer 4

First pull you credit report. If in fact it is charged off you should not have to pay it back. And do not until you talk to an attorney. Because credit stays on your report for 7 years if you pay it off, even though it was good of you, it is still bad credit and it will be 7 years from the date that you paid it off before it falls off. You need to contact Sears and find out how it is that this company got this info after 6 years. And then go from their. What ever you do don't pay the bill until you contact an attorney or a couselor that knows what they are talking about.

Answer 5

Hey, there are reasons why that collection agency has dug up that old debt and is now harrassing you. If it is valued at $8100, they probably bought the debt for $20-25.

This article may help you understand why they are pursuing the debt this far down the road and what your rights may be. Good luck.

Answer 6

NEVER EVER pay a collection agency!!!!!! If the original lender is not calling you, then don't pay anyone else!!!! no matter what they say!!! thay can't and they won't take you to court because they can only sue for what they bought it for!!! not what you owe someone else. Don't write to them ,don't answer any of their question,hang up,then get a cell phone, pay as you go type.They are dogs with a bark but no bite.

Answer 7

KNOW YOUR RIGHTS!
Don't pay them one penny! First of all, you need to check your state's SOL for credit. That is statute of limitations. Depending on your state, for instance if a state has five years, after five years of the last payment on the account, that account cannot be collected on because it is past the SOL. Why? Well, that is extremely important to know if you are summoned to court. If it is past the SOL, they cannot sue you for the money. They can, however, try as hard as they may to get the money from you thinking you do not know your rights!
So, here is my advice, before you start to get an ulcer or make the one you have worse, PLEASE check out this website. Those collectors are evil, and if it's from Sears, they are worse than EVIL from what I have heard. They will use every single scare tactic they can...by calling neighbors, family, co-workers to harass you. I don't know if it is a third-party collector, if it is, they bought the wrote-off account (all accounts are wrote-off after 180 days by federal law and can be sold to third-party debt collectors).
Just please, do as much research as you can, and don't talk to them anymore.
Yes, they do need to verify the debt. If you sent them a certified letter, keep track of it. Keep track of everything you do with them. Don't talk to them anymore, and do not promise them money or pay them until you find out what your rights are and what your SOL is.
If you want me to help you find your SOL, just message me, I'll be glad to help. I do understand what a pain these people are!
Also, please check out this website: www.buddhibbs.com. He has very good advice, information on creditors and many other useful techniques, forms and help topics for you to read about. Again, feel free to message me if you need help with your SOL.

If it is possible, get a copy of your credit report from all 3 agencies. You can verify the exact date you last paid on that account, and easily find out if you are within the SOL. Then, another good thing to do, is to dispute those charges with each credit report. But remember this, which not so many people know, the credit reporting agencies help those creditors to find your information. They do skip-tracing to find people that tried to hide from their creditors, and they aren't so wonderful.......they work with the creditors and third-party creditors.

Knowledge is the most important thing. Get yourself geared up with as much info as you can by doing research on credit laws and the site link below, I think you can get this situation in better perspective once you become more informed!

Good luck!

Answer 8

sounds like your being taken for a ride. collection agencies have no authority for anything. if you got a court summons, it was probably fake. once something is introduced into court the other party has no say in the matter. go to the courthouse and see if your on the docket for the court date. if not, disreguard everything the collection agency has to say. what they do is actually breaking the law. ive dealt with them in the past and found that they were all mouth and i actually had alot of fun with them. i did a little reverse psycology with them , and it didnt take long for them to leave me alone. remember, they are not the police, they have no authority and can do nothing to you.

Answer 9

Ok You need to talk to a credit counciling agency or an attourny. If the debt is charged of on your credit. you dont have to pay it back the company wrote it of as a loss.

Answer 10

many situations the unique creditor is basically no longer prepared to deal with you using fact they have bought the debt to a sequence enterprise. you could continuously call them and notice what you could artwork out nevertheless. seems logical that they might choose to have the full quantity themselves and save on the sequence enterprise value.