LEGALIZED EXTORTION – or Third Party Debt Collectors

 

They depend on the fact that you are too humiliated or embarassed to even question their tactics, let alone fight them.  If you do fight, they file law-suits and publish your name in your local paper as a dead-beat with a judgement filed against you.  Has this happened to you?  If it hasn't yet, it will, trust me.  Unless we stand up and demand legislation to stop these blood-sucking vampires, no one is going to be safe from their ever growing power to squeeze the life out of every mortal in America. 

 

Well, I've had it.  I'm fed up and I'm not taking it any longer.

 

Do you have a story like this?  I bet you do.

 

Want to do something about it?

 

If the blogsphere were to band together and use our power for good, we could create a grass-roots uprising, demanding legislation (see my proposal below) to end the legalized extortion.

 

This much is true, once upon a time I owed AT&T $396.03.  The bill was for my home phone service in South Carolina, sometime in the summer of 1995 or 1996, I’m not quite sure which.  I paid the bill by check.  AT&T failed to credit my account.  I sent them a copy of the account and they properly credited my account.  A few months later they disconnected my long distance phone service for non payment of $396.03.  Seems when I sent them a copy of the payment and the receipt, who ever received it never properly credited my account.  I had names, phone numbers, account numbers, the whole nine yards.  I never could make them see reason.  In 1998 I moved to New Mexico.  AT&T hounded me here.  Once again I informed them the account had been paid.  I sent copies of receipts, etc. and never heard from them again.

 

UNTIL – December 12, 2006 when I received a collection notice from Northeast Credit & Collections demanding I send them 50% of the amount I owe AT&T - $ 198.01 OR ELSE.  I have thirty days to comply. 

 

 

The statute of limitations expired several years ago.

 

Statute of Limitations – we don’t need no statute of limitations.

 

It is called Zombie Debt collections.

 

“…To get you to pay up, zombie debt collectors do things like threaten to sue, threaten to have you arrested, try to get you to accept a bait-and-switch credit card which has the old debt secretly tacked on or promise to clear an old debt from your credit report for a token payment, which, in fact, can reactivate that debt….”

 

 

It is also completely legal. 

“…Embarrassing calls at work. Threats of jail and even violence. Improper withdrawals from bank accounts. An increasing number of consumers are complaining of abusive techniques from some companies that are part of a new breed of debt collectors. They are debt buyers, outfits that acquire unpaid bills from credit card firms and other credit providers for pennies on the dollar and then try to collect. Some of these companies go after bills so old that consumers can no longer be sued for them in court or punished for them on their credit reports.

 

As the amount of consumer debt has risen over the years, so too has the number of these firms, growing from about a dozen firms in 1996 to more than 500 today. Industry officials say the firms provide a real benefit to indebted consumers, letting them pay off their bills at steep discounts. But industry critics -- plaintiff attorneys, consumer advocates and regulators -- say that for some firms, the demand to make a profit on the debts they purchase has resulted in the increasing use of heavy-handed, and sometimes illegal, tactics.

 

Year in, year out, the Federal Trade Commission receives more complaints about debt collectors than any other industry. But in recent years, these complaints have skyrocketed -- from 13,950 in 2000 to 58,687 last year. Complaints about third-party debt collectors accounted for close to one in six of all FTC complaints last year, up from 9.5 percent in 2000.

 

Francis Buselli of Amherst, N.H., told the FTC that a debt collector called him repeatedly about a debt the company said his daughter owed -- even though she had moved out 15 years before. On Nov. 26, 2004, the company called about six times in 15 minutes. On the final call, the debt collector recited Buselli's Social Security number, mentioned his wife by name and threatened to send thugs to get him, according to Buselli's FTC complaint.

 

"They knew too much about me. That really scared me," he said in an interview.

Last year, the agency sued the collector, Capital Acquisitions and Management Corp. (CAMCO), a large nationwide collection agency that the FTC said bought old debt lists, often ones that may have been sold several times before. The commission alleged that CAMCO pursued consumers who were not the actual debtors, just people with similar or identical names living in the same area. The firm subsequently shut down….”

 

And what about Northeast   that is harassing me?  According to consumer advocate Bud Hibbs, they are the slime below the pond scum! 

 

Sometime in the next few days I will be writing a cease and desist letter to NCC along with a copy to all the credit agencies.  Once this is done, if they contact me again they will be breaking the law, I hope. 

 

If this weren’t the only one bothering me I’d be fine.  But, around the first of December I was served with legal papers to appear in court – for a lawsuit by Midland Credit Management.    They want $1700 for a card I may or may not have paid and can find nothing except the fact that the card had a $900 max.  This one is now sitting in my attorney’s office costing me at least $500 to fight.  There were a number of statutes broken in they suit they filed, including the fact that it may not be my card.  My attorney is hoping the judge will force an automatic dismissal of the case.  No documentation was provided, including the warning that I must contact the collection bureau attorney and NOT the clerk of court, which would result in an automatic judgment against me with an unspecified number of charges my attorney feels could be well over $5,000. 

 

To understand what is going on, read this article from the St. Pete Times by Scott Baranick.   The bottom line is the fact that third party purchase of written off debt for pennies on the dollar is perfectly legal.  Most people are too embarrassed to even fight it.  I’ve had it and think we need to have the laws changed.

 

Know your rights.

Know who you are up against. 

Know who the bad companies are. 

Stories

Creditwatch

debt consolodation

ripoff report

http://consumers.creditwrench.com/showthread.php?t=516&goto=nextnewest 

Naturally I managed to forget all about my parents’ problems with MCI or rather a collection scam.  Back in the fall, when my niece went to Nairobi, my mother did the teenager thing and ran up nearly $900 in long distance bills.  My father negotiated with MCI, argued and finally paid the bill.  So back in November he gets this call saying he owes MCI something like $89 and would he like to give them a check over the phone.  Before my mother could stop him, he gives this person a check routing number over the phone.  My mother calls me.  I freak.  They start closing checking accounts, cancel debit cares, the whole nine yards, transfer balances into a different account, the bank does a stop payment.  It finally dawned on me that all we needed to do was to order checks with a larger stub number and have the bank flag anything that comes in below #800 or something.  It all worked out, so no problems there.  But, they keep getting calls about that $89.  It is not from MCI.  MCI is trying to track who is trying to collect.  They call, my mother asks for case numbers, contacts, company name, phone numbers, none of which check out at all.  Bottom line – someone has fabricated a past due bill to extort money re: third party debt collections. 

 

The only way to stop these practices is to completely make third party debt collection illegal.  Since their lobby is so large that will never happen.  What we need is to limit the percentage a debt collector can keep, service fees, interest rates etc.  and force the third party collector to return all but maybe a 15-20% of the fee collected to the original source.  It would put an end to this quickly.

 

Zombie debt collections need to be made illegal and punishable as extortion.  Any debt that is past the statute of limitations, no matter how a zombie collector tries to renew it, should be considered over and zombie collectors should be punished by prison.

 

It is also time to put an end to the practice of nuisence lawsuits by these people.  They are clogging our court system.  Any debt collection for an amount below $5000 should not be allowed to be taken to any court what-so-ever.  These people rely on the fact that we are too humiliated to fight them, let alone answer their improperly filed complaints.  Thousands of lives have been ruined.  It is time to speak up and stop them.