[PLUG-TALK] Web Site Date Recognition

[Rich Shepard]

On Sun, 4 Jan 2015, Richard Powell wrote:

> I've had similar problems with a certain phone company (AT&T).

   Interesting. My issues are with the financial industry, not the
telecommunications industry (except for Frontier changing my IP address
every hour on the half-hour from 7:30 pm to the following 6:30 am, every
day.

   Some banks, and the one that harrassed me is particularly fond of doing
this, also have a history of not notifying credit bureaus to remove debts
cleared by bankrupcy courts; they continue to try to collect themselves or
sell the accounts to collection agencies. My banker told me she was abused
this way after her divorce.

> I opted instead to send letters directly to the reporting bureau's
> demanding they remove the incorrect information. The bureaus are supposed
> to remove the faulty information and then it falls upon the creditor to
> provide "proof" that you really do owe the money.

   My experiences are that the bureaus send the challenge to the creditor,
but do not remove it unless the creditor does not reply within 30 days.
FWIW, the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau only records the
complaint; they're too badly underfunded to actually provide consumer
financial protection.

> Over the course of eight years, I had to do this about three times. And
> each time, the incorrect data was removed within 30 to 60 days. Each time,
> it stayed removed until the account got sent to some other collection
> agency. The last time it happened, I just pointed out that it was older
> than 7 years and they removed it with a simple phone call.

   Allow me to recommend a book to you: Jake Halpern's "Bad Paper: Chasing
Debt from Wall Street to the Underworld." It's a fascinating read. I bought
a copy and my accountant borrowed it; she was also blown away at the
underhanded practices of the debt collection industry.

   One collection attorney (and these folks are at the absolute bottom of the
industry hierarchy) told the author that if 90% of the people who are seved
with notice to appear in court about a collection effort actually went there
and said to the plaintiff, in front of the judge, just 4 words: "show me your
proof" the industry would collapse because in almost every case there is no
paperwork to provide that proof.

   I and my attorney kept asking the bank for proof, and they just
stone-walled us, finally writing that they would no longer respond to our
requests for proof of responsibility for that account. It was only when my
attorney sent them the forms we were ready to submit for trial that they
offered to "settle."

Grrr-r-r!

Rich