Bill Bauer





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STUDENT'S FDCPA REFERENCE SHEET

 

<h1>What is FDCPA and why was this law enacted?</h1>
1. http://www.ftc.gov/os/statutes/fdcpa/fdcpact.htm#802

(e) It is the purpose of this title to eliminate abusive debt collection practices by debt collectors, to insure that those debt collectors who refrain from using abusive debt collection practices are not competitively disadvantaged, and to promote consistent State action to protect consumers against debt collection abuses. The student should also be well aware that in the following 23 states their laws actually take precedence over FDCPA as they are more strict and also treat original creditors the same as though they were 3rd party debt collectors under state law. There are also other situations in which banks and other lending institutions as well as attorneys that might normally think of themselves as being original creditors or not subject to FDCPA are actually 3rd party debt collectors and must abide by it’s rules. This has been true since the passage of the  Gramm Leach Bliley Act


2. When studying any law it is always important to have the definitions firmly in mind. This tells us what is meant by various terms and wording in the law and who the law applies to. Always study the definitions and understand them well.
http://www.ftc.gov/os/statutes/fdcpa/fdcpact.htm#803
He also may not ask 3rd parties for any information which he already has in his possession. impermissible questions

3. § 804.  Acquisition of location information
If a debt collector calls one of your family members or a neighbor or acquaintance or a friend here are the rules that he must go by.
§ 804.  Acquisition of location information

If your are informed by any of the above types of persons that a debt collector has called them asking about you they would be well advised to get the collector’s Company name, address and phone number and then you should provide them with a copy of my
 FULL CEASE & DESIST LETTER
with the instructions that they need to sign it and seal it and send it to the collector’s address by certified mail return receipt requested and in the event that the collector violates it they can sue him to enforce their demand. You should also be aware that it is illegal for the debt collector to ask any friend, relative or neighbor to convey any message to you. This is covered in the FTC ATTEBERRY OPINION LETTER

In the event that a debt collector calls you at work you may use the second letter in the series
of cease & desist letters.
to put a stop to them harassing you at your place of employment. You have every right to do so and in order to preserve your job you should not hesitate to do this if a debt collector bothers you at work. You should realize that your time at work belongs to your employer, his telephone system also belongs to him and is for the sole purpose of conducting his business. Allowing debt collectors to use his labor and his facilities for their purposes is little more than allowing an outsider to steal from your employer. You would not do that if you realized that such a thing was taking place and now you know how it affects your employer so put a stop to it quickly. Use the cease & desist order to do that. The debt collector has no reason to turn that into a lawsuit against you since you have allowed him to contact you at your home which is where he should be contacting you in the first place. But you should never send a full cease & desist letter to a debt collector because if you do you leave him little choice under the law but to sue you.
That is covered at
 § 809.  Validation of debts    [15 USC 1692g]
and tells you all about cease & desist.

 

4. What to do if you are contacted by a debt collector at your home by telephone. This is covered in
§ 807.  False or misleading representations  [15 USC 1962e] and even more revealing and interesting is the Kwait opinon letter
and states that debt collectors must give full and meaningful disclosure about who they are in their communications with you.

And although it don't fit in perfectly here I would direct your attention to this interesting court decisonwhich deals with the envelope a debt collector used in sending a dunning leter to a student loan debtor.

While that section does discuss initial (first) communications with you for the most part we take it quite a bit further by having you use our list of 18 questions which you should ask bill collectors each and every time they call. Doing so puts a stop to the harassment that debtors normally suffer at the hands of a calling debt collector. When they call they expect to control the conversation because that is the only way they can collect on the phone and they are well trained to do just that. So you need to have a copy of our 18 questions handy by the phone and a copy of our phone call record
contact information sheet handy so you can record the phone calls quickly and easily. The list of 18 questions is part of your student instruction sheet that you received when you first joined Creditwrench and it is again presented in the free course you get by sending an email to course1@autobotinfo.com
and it is presented to you yet once again at
18 QUESTIONS TO ASK DEBT COLLECTORS
It will also be found in the student lounge
 on the Creditwrench message board.  So you should never have any problem finding it.

5. § 809.  Validation of debts    [15 USC 1692g]
tells us that
(a) 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 containing --- 

Sorry, but in order to conserve space and to be sure that you thoroughly learn the lesson I must insist that you click on the link above and learn it for yourself.
The important part to understand here is that the initial communication can be either verbal by phone or by written letter. What must be in that initial letter is very important to know and understand. It is thoroughly covered at
 § 809.  Validation of debts    [15 USC 1692g]
and again in the FTC opinion letter entitled MEZINES
and in the case of Carroll v. Wolpoff & Abramson 961 F.2d 459 (4th Cir. 1992) in an opinion dated March 30, 1992, the court held that the statutory mandate was clear: the debt collection notification must be included in all correspondence. It is again addressed in 15 U.S.C. @ 1692(e) and so it should be very easily seen by the student exactly what is demanded in all dunning letters as well as in the initial (first) dunning letter sent by the collector. There are a plethoria of court cases which cover this in great detail.
 Spears v. Brennan, 7th Circuit Ct. of Appeals. as well as other court cases. However, do not be fooled into believing that an attorney cannot bring a lawsuit against you during that 30 days after sending you his dunning letter. Bartlett v. Heibl, 128 F.3d 497 (7th Cir. 1997)

Here, an attorney drafts a letter which he recommends that debt collectors use for their initial letter to debtors but this letter would not be as safe as this lawyer seems to think it would be. Can you spot why it would not pass muster under current law? It should be easy for you to find several violations of FDCPA in this letter. But do not think that such a letter and it's lack of proper wording does not make it dangerous. But it does lack at least 3 highly important indices. What are they? Can you spot all 3?

www.hinshawlaw.com also have valuable comments on Illinois law and Bartlett v. Heibl, 128 F.3d 497 (7th Cir. 1997). It appears that the case does not appear anywhere on line so that if you wish to study the actual case itself you may have to go to a law library in order to do that.

What you need to do when you receive that initial contact by phone is once you have reached the end of the 18 questions is to be sure that you verbally demand that they validate the debt. If they claim that they have already validated the debt you need to tell them very firmly that they have not validated the debt and the normal thing to do at that point is to simply hang up on them. And if they call back again immediately or at any time in the future you need to force them to go through the same list of questions all over again with the same end result. You demand validation and hang up on them. If you will but do as I tell you it will not be long before you will be wishing they would call back again so you can have some more fun with them. But they won’t. Problem solved.

If you have received your first (initial) contact letter you should immediately check it out to see whether or not it contains all of the things on it that are required by law. First thing to check for is to see if the letter complies with the law to be found at

§ 809.  Validation of debts    [15 USC 1692g]
In order for the letter to be fully compliant it must bear all of the indices enumerated and outlined in § 809.  All of them must be present and none can be left out.
Additionally, there must be a statement on the letter which says and I quote, “As of this date your total indebtedness is $XX.xx. Each and every letter sent to you by a debt collector must have that wording or it is a violation in and of itself. Few of them ever do.
Also, each and every letter sent to you by a 3rd party debt collector must have the wording to be found at “communication is from a debt collector
It is also discussed in the FTC opinion letter entitled Stewart which goes clear back to 1993 so this is nothing new at all.

Once you have received your initial written communication from the debt collector you have 30 days within which you must answer that letter with a demand for validation or you will suffer the consequences listed at § 809.  Validation of debts (b) but you do not lose the right to demand validation of the debt as some debt collectors would like you to believe. One never loses the right to have proof of the debt. When you receive a dunning letter from a collector you may want to note the date on the letter and wait for 25 days after the date on the letter to send validation in order to put as much delay into their process as possible. Your validation letter should never give any account information.

I will now go into the reason why I teach that you should never give any account information when demanding validation of the debt. To do that we need to look at
§ 809.  Validation of debts    [15 USC 1692g] (b)(a) and we see that they should not contact you again after they receive your validation demand except to tell you that they have received your demand for validation and that they will not contact you again until their investigation is complete.

Here is an important case dealing with Title 15 U.S.C. 1692g
It deals with overshadowing the Miranda warning which must be given in the first dunning letter. In this case, a few days after plaintiff received first dunning letter a second dunning letter was received which bore threats overshadowing the Miranda warning in the first dunning letter.

But wait a minute! You didn’t give them an account number so they are going to have to ask you what account you are talking about. If it don’t do anything else it will make them waste a few days out of their 30 days in which they must validate the debt thereby stacking the odds in your favor that they will be unable to get the job done within 30 days if at all. In FCRA the credit bureaus are allowed to demand more information and their 30 day time limit is tolled until you provide them with the information that they demand.
Congress did not accord 3rd party debt collectors that right in FDCPA. I don’t know why they didn’t, but the fact is that no such provision exists in FDCPA. In the event that they do ask you for more information you should send them a photocopy of their dunning letter and nothing more but you do need to be quick about sending it to them. One of the most important concepts that you need to grasp is that although you demand validation you do not actually want to get it. What you hope is that they will fail to validate withinthe 30 days allotted them and you will then have yet another violation against them and your “permission to move on with estoppel and the rest of the Creditwrench program.

 

You need to understand the sequence of how the Creditwrench program works so that you do not become disillusioned with our program. The first step is, of course, the validation letter.


The second step in the Creditwrench process comes when you get your green card back from the validation letter. This letter is designed to be used hoping to get a quick deletion from your credit bureau files. This dispute letter must be tailored to fit the exact circumstance of the listing on your credit bureau files. You need to put in the name and account information so that the credit bureaus will know what listing you are talking about. The theory of this letter is that once the collector has received a validation demand he may not make any report to the credit bureaus. So if he does then you have a FCRA violation against him as well as the FDCPA violations that will normally be generated anyway.

There is no need to wait until you get your green card back from the post office to know when to send out this second letter to the credit bureaus. All you have to do is wait 3 days and go to U.S.P.S.COM and enter in the tracking code from the white slip you get from the post office and check it each day until they tell you it has been delivered and then you can feel free to send out the letter to the credit bureaus. It will normally take the post office 3 to 4 days to deliver unless a weekend is involved so that will be about right for the time frame allowed for the credit bureaus to complete their investigations.We will see how well this strategy actually works over time.

If you got your Creditwrench validation letter on or after the November 1, 2003 then you need to send an email and get a copy of this new letter so you can put it to use. Like all other letters this one must be sent certified with return receipt requested.

There is never any variation of that. 25 days after the date on the green card you need to contact me so that I can provide you with a copy of our so called estoppel letter which needs to get mailed out on the 30th or 31st day after the date on the green card from validation.

The 3rd step is our 2 payday letters and they need to go out on the 15th or 16th day after the date on the estoppel green card. One goes to the original creditor (in most but not all cases) and one goes to the 3rd party collector. Each lists the offenses committed by the collector but only 2 or 3 of them. One does not want to reveal his entire hand at this point.

The 4th and final step is the Soap letter. This is a much more difficult letter to prepare and I need to put out a separate instruction sheet for the latter two letters. I will do that as soon as possible. Soap needs to go out on the 15th or 16th day after the green card from the payday letters. In order to meet those timelines which are extremely important to the overall success of the Creditwrench program you need to contact me by email and let me know that you are in need of the next letter and what that letter is. I cannot possibly keep track of those dates for all of my students.

I also plan to start incorporating a bit of “credit repair” tactics into Creditwrench and that will not be long in coming. It will work in some cases but not all.

I have a lot more to add to this instruction sheet yet and more modifications to what is already here. I want to go over this instruction sheet and add in the references to the appropriate FTC opinion letters and some court cases so this will be an ongoing project that may take a very long time to perfect. Until I can get more time and more references this will have to do.

For now, take care.
  


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Creditwrench™ has lots and lots of resources available for you to learn how to
deal with your debt problems and re-establish your credit.
Our website is at Creditwrench website and we have a message board at
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Bill Bauer