Carreon and Associates Credit Repair Blog:

The FTC conducts and formulates a report once a year to Congress about the FDCPA and how it’s being followed by the collection industry. No surprise was that consumer complaints were up in 2010 from 119,000 to 140,000. the FTC received more complaints about debt collection than any other single industry.

The top three categories of complaints about third-party collectors were:

• calling repeatedly or continuously;
• misrepresenting the character, amount, or status of the debt (including demanding a larger payment than is permitted by law); and
• failing to send consumers a statutorily required written notice about the debt and their rights

The top three complaints in the report go specifically to the continued problem of debtor’s not being able to deal with a collection agency in a manner that is not harassing. It’s these reasons that many consumers hide from debt collectors or refuse to deal with the issue at all.

One of the biggest problems still appears to be the validation of debt issue. By law, a consumer has a right to validate a debt from a collection agency before they pay it. The consumer can, in writing, ask the agency to provide details of the debt to ensure they are being correctly dunned. Under the FDCPA , the collection agency must follow the statutory requirements of sending written notice of the debt along with the consumer’s rights. This notice gives the debtor an opportunity to find out what the debt is about – this is important and especially so on very old debts.

Often, a debt may not be assigned out to a collection agency  for some time. By the time the debtor realizes they are in collections, they may not even realize what the bill is for. The FDCPA allows the person to request proof. This is where the collection industry still falls short of meeting the requirements. This law allows a person a window of time before the collector can begin pursuing the debt so the consumer can be sure the amount  being collected or the debt in whole is legitimate.

With collection agencies still coming under fire for not following this basic standard, it goes to the heart of the underlying problem in the industry itself. Certainly some of these debtors are hard to locate but the bulk of the problem seems to be the consumer that has eventually been contacted but still not giving their basic right to validate the debt.  With debts being sold by the millions to agencies all over the country and the number of erroneous collection accounts either through identity theft or incorrectly identifying the right debtor, more work is needed to ensure this basic right.

To be fair, a consumer must use that window of time upon first being notified about the debt. To preserve your rights under the FDCPA, you should immediately reply to the notice and request validation in order to hold off on the collection process. If you ignore the first notice completely then the debt collector has the right to assume the debt is indeed, valid.

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