A NJ man recently received phone calls from someone claiming to be a debt collector. As it turns out, he paid his loan back months ago but the phony collection calls still tried to scam him out of hundreds of dollars. He’s telling his story to warn others of the threatening calls and collection harassment he is experiencing over a debt he does not owe. Experts say be careful leaving your personal information on any website, and contact the proper authorities if you are the victim of such calls – including an attorney who will fight for your rights.
Unmanageable debt has become a way of life for a majority of Americans. Even as our government struggles to survive its own massive deficits, it is not surprising that we as individuals often have difficulty meeting our credit card payments, mortgages and car loans, especially when interest rates and bank fees are designed to keep consumers deep in debt. The fact is that our economy encourages people to live with too much debt, in ways that cannot be repaid in a lifetime. We are encouraged to buy more than we need and to pay for it later by use of credit cards, mortgages, student loans and car payments. Even with the best of intentions, unforeseen things can happen. Yet, we all need to survive and must provide for our families, even if it comes at the cost of not knowing how to pay for it until later. And so, money issues can get out of control, even more so when something unexpected happens. It can be the result of an historically bad economy, divorce, death or illness of a wage earner, or job loss. Debt increases throughout life and causes major stress.
If paying your bills has become difficult, your accounts have likely been sent to collections. Collection departments and debt collectors are the tools used by banks, mortgage companies, auto lenders and credit card companies. These same businesses that encouraged you to buy, to pay later, assault you with collection harassment demands to pay immediately, by any means necessary; and when people don’t pay immediately, that’s when things go from bad to worse. Collection departments and debt collectors specialize in pressuring you to pay and pay and pay, often resorting to harassment, threats, abuse, deception and occasionally filing lawsuits, until they get what they want. In far too many cases, the actual amounts being sought changes considerably, growing far greater than the amounts actually owed without any justification. In other cases, the debts are too old to be collected, but that does not stop the collection industry from pushing as hard as possible, knowing that good people want to pay their bills.
If you find yourself being called by a debt collector, the chances of you being the victim of collection agency harassment is far greater than you may think. Americans are contacted by debt collection agencies every year, in many cases several times a year. However, there are steps that one can take in order to stop the harassment, and to be certain they do not pay anything more than they actually owe. In many cases, people can drastically reduce and even eliminate the debt they have. A lot of debt claims can be defended, more often than you think.
One of the key points to getting out of debt and avoiding collection harassment is to manage your money effectively, but once you are already having trouble, you need help. Getting debt help starts with gaining knowledge on managing your income and expenses, keeping a tight rein on unnecessary spending and eliminating erratic behavior. It also means cutting back on offers of credit and not using cards that charge excessive interest and fees. The removal of debt harassment in your life, whether you are experiencing it for the first time or have been dealing with it for years, is achievable through calculated steps to keep your money and life in order.
Debt collection harassment attorney Craig Kimmel and client Patrice Perry appeared on Fox News to discuss a case against Capital One. Capital One harassed Patrice over a credit card debt and sent her a bill for $286 million.
As featured on Fox News Channel:
A Delaware County woman claims that a malicious human being – and not a computer program – is behind the erroneous $286,651,237 credit-card bill that Capital One sent her last year, according to a lawsuit filed last week in Philadelphia court.
Now, Patrice Perry, 58, is suing Capital One for that same ridiculous amount for the months of harassment and “terroristic debt-collection methods” that she suffered at their hands, according to the suit.
Her attorney, Craig Kimmel, said that the nine-figure bill that Perry received in August was the final straw.
“It’s not that different from going up to someone’s house, knocking on the door and punching them in the face when they answer,” he said.
Perry’s troubles started in May 2009, when Capital One began trying to collect an alleged credit-card debt from her, according to the suit. The company not only called her at home and at work repeatedly, it also called her family and co-workers, the suit said.
Perry, a hotel clerk from Clifton Heights, received a series of bills, the first of which claimed that she owed $4,807, Kimmel said. The second bill, which came more than two months later, said, without explanation, that she owed about $100 less, according to the suit.
Kimmel said that his client never paid the first bill and was confused when the second one dropped in price. The third bill, received on Aug. 11, 2009, was $13 more than the first bill, again without explanation or a list of how the charges were calculated.
“It’s not your typical scenario, where you’d expect if they were pursing debt with interest it would only go up,” Kimmel said. “It went down and up and down and up. The only thing I can associate with that is that they were trying to confuse my client.”
If Perry was confused after the third bill, she was dumbstruck when the fourth arrived for $286,651,237. Capital One asked that payment be sent in an envelope included with the bill and threatened to pursue legal action if she didn’t pay.
“She was shocked, she had never seen a letter with such a big number on it before,” Kimmel said. “And to demand she put the money in the envelope included and send it back . . . Phew!”
Kimmel said that a bill that large would most likely have been flagged and that human beings, not computers, are behind it.
In a written statement, a Capital One spokeswoman doesn’t deny that claim.
“There are very rare occasions when human error has led to inaccuracies in customer billing letters,” the statement read, in part. “This is clearly one of those instances. . . . We are working to resolve this issue.”
Kimmel said that Capital One sued Perry for a lesser amount, but when no one from the company showed up for a hearing this spring, the case was dropped.
The last communication Perry received from Capital One was last week, when she got a letter that, without mentioning the last bill for more than $286 million, states that she now owes around $6,000, Perry said.
Article by:
STEPHANIE FARR
Philadelphia Daily News
farrs@phillynews.com, 215-854-4225
Original article here: What’s in her wallet? Well, not $286,651,237
Related Articles following this story:
Boston Herald
Courier Post Online
The Consumerist
Across the nation, there is a surge in lawsuits against people who aren’t paying their bills, driven by the debt-buying industry that has surged in the past three years as debt has become cheaper and cheaper to buy amid hard economic times.
On the same day that Midland Funding LLC filed suit against a New York social worker, it filed 109 lawsuits against consumers with delinquent debt in Bronx County Civil Court. The courthouse has handled 4,279 similar cases since the beginning of the year. None of the debtors sued that day had lawyers and only 10% showed in court.
Roughly 94% of collection cases filed against borrowers result in default judgments in favor of the debt buyer, according to industry estimates. The majority of borrowers don’t have a lawyer, some don’t know they are even being sued, and others don’t appear in court, say judges.
The increase in lawsuits creates problems for the legal system and some judges have claimed hearing as many as 400 debt collection cases in a single day. In a number of cases, the debt buyer’s ignore state and federal laws, such as the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.
A growing number of cases brought by debt buyers are plagued by sloppy, incomplete or even false documentation of debts, according to the 20 judges around the country interviewed by the Journal. According to a deposition filed as part of a lawsuit against Midland Funding, an employee testified that he signs 200 to 400 affidavits a day and very few are checked for accuracy.
Read the entire story here: Boom in Debt Buying Fuels Another Boom—in Lawsuits
The Fair Debt Collections Practices Act, or FDCPA, was enacted to protect consumers from overzealous debt collectors whose methods include harassment, threats and coercion. To these businesses a consumer is nothing more than a number representing dollars and cents, part of the profit margin and nothing more.
These debt collectors view their violations of the FDCPA as a business decision instead of a lawful requirement that may must abide by. Their disregard of this law is clearly expressed in the following insider marketing documents that were sent out to various debt collectors offering litigation services.
UNCOVERED! One Illinois lawyer bragging to Debt collectors how they can skirt the FDCPA!
Each year the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) provides Congress with a report on the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA). While the report focuses heavily on the number of complaints received from consumers, it also summarizes actions that the FTC has taken to “curtail deceptive, unfair, and abusive debt collection practices.”
As in years past, the FTC received more complaints about the debt collection industry than any other industry. In 2009, the FTC received 119,364 complaints about first- and third-party debt collectors, up from 104,766 in 2008—an increase of nearly 15,000 complaints. With that said, it is important to point out that the FTC does not investigate each complaint to determine if there was an actual violation of the law. The FTC acknowledges that not all of the complaints received are violations of the Act. It is also worth noting that although the total number of complaints increased, so did the number of consumers who fell past due on credit obligations. An increase in the number of past due consumers opens the door for an increase in the number of complaints.
We encourage you to download and review the 2010 FDCPA report in its entirety to become familiar with its contents, and if you haven’t reviewed the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act lately, you might consider doing so while this article has your attention.
We review the top five FDCPA complaints received by the FTC in 2009 and point you to the corresponding section of the FDCPA.
#5 Communicating with Third Parties Repeatedly to Obtain Location Information.
“This past year, 19.2% of complaints, or 16,926 complaints, claimed that collectors called a third party repeatedly to obtain location information …”
The FDCPA §804(3) says: A debt collector shall not communicate with a third party more than once unless requested to do so by the third party, or unless the debt collector reasonably believes that the earlier response of the third party was erroneous or incomplete and that the third party now has correct and complete location information.
#4 Threatening Action Which Cannot or Is Not Intended to Be Taken.
“In 2009, 20.9% of FDCPA complaints, or 18,438 complaints, reported that third party collectors falsely threatened a lawsuit or some other action that they could not or did not intend to take…”
The FDCPA §807(5) says: A debt collector shall not threaten to take any action that cannot legally be taken or that is not intended to be taken.
#3 Failing to Send the Required Validation Notice.
“Last year, 25.7% of the FDCPA complaints, or 22,708 complaints, reported that collectors did not provide the required notice….”
The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act §809(a) says: Within five days after the initial communication with a consumer in connection with the collection of any debt, a debt collector shall, unless the following information is contained in the initial communication or the consumer has paid the debt, send the consumer a written notice …” (The notice is referred to as the Validation Notice and includes the amount of the debt, name of the creditor, and important information regarding disputes and verification.
#2 Demanding a Larger Payment Than is Permitted by Law.
“This category includes two different FDCPA law violation codes. First, the FDCPA prohibits debt collectors from misrepresenting the character, amount, or legal status of the debt. Other complaints in this category state that collectors have sought to collect on debts that have been discharged in bankruptcy. In 2009, 31.1%, or 27,420 FDCPA complaints, described this conduct.”
The FDCPA §807(2) says: A debt collector may not use any false, deceptive, or misleading representation or means in connection with the collection of any debt. This includes the false representation of the character, amount, or legal status; or any services rendered or compensation which may be lawfully received by any debt collector for the collection of a debt.
#1 Calling Repeatedly and Continuously.
“In 2009, 46.5% of FDCPA complaints the FTC received, or 41,028 complaints, claimed that collectors harassed the complainants by calling repeatedly or continuously.”
The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act §806(5) says: A debt collector may not cause a telephone to ring or engage any person in telephone conversation repeatedly or continuously with intent to annoy, abuse, or harass any person at the called number.”
Article Source: http://www.insidearm.com/thecomplaintsissue/top-five-FDCPA-complaints.cfm
Debt Collection Attorney Craig Kimmel is featured in this story from the Concord Monitor detailing the aggressive tactics that debt collectors employ to collect on debts they purchase for pennies on the dollar. Consumers reported being harassed and threatened. They said collection agents failed to investigate disputed debts and disclosed alleged debt to relatives and employers.
Third-party debt collectors generated 78,000 complaints to the Federal Trade Commission in 2008, twice the number received in 2003, according to the agency’s most recent report. That same year, the agency won more than $1 million in civil damages against collection agencies.
You can read the entire article here: Suits Piling up for Debt Collectors.
Voicemails from bill collectors are a reality when you have been turned over to collections. The dirty secret debt collectors don’t want you to know about is that they very often violate the law (Fair Debt Collection Practices Act – FDCPA) when they leave a voicemail message.
They know they are violating the law but they still do it anyway.
There are three types of illegal voicemails:
- Illegal threats or lies.
- Third party disclosures.
- Failure to leave the mini-miranda.
Debt collectors often call repeatedly when collecting a debt, leaving messages whenever possible and rely on the fact that consumers often don’t know their rights.
You can read the article in it’s entirety, here: Three Types of Illegal Voicemails from Debt Collectors
Debt Collection Harassment Attorney Craig Thor Kimmel was recently interviewed by the radio talk show, “The Voice”, on WEEU 830AM in Berks County, PA. In this interview Craig explains how CreditLaw.com helps consumers with debt collection harassment and violations of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act while answering questions from consumers who called into the show. Please use the following link to listen to the entire radio interview:
Radio Interview
