How Can I Sign Alabama Banking PDF

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hey guys welcome to this video my name is john watts i'm a consumer protection lawyer and in this video what we will cover is really why do we send a dispute letter to a debt collector that we find on our credit reports and we'll go over five reasons and then a timeline and then we'll have a couple bonus things and really this is designed for our clients so clients of my firm watson herring but i thought that this might be useful for lawyers that watch our videos for people who we do not represent but there may be something that you can learn from this or get some ideas from and of course you can adapt it however you want so anyway let's get started so here's the overview we'll look at what does our dispute letter typically say and then what about gathering information on the alleged debt that's one reason why we send a dispute letter how about getting rid of the debt if the collector's not going to pursue it and then here's a big one this one in the middle see if the debt collector will mark the account as quote disputed under the fdcpa the fair debt collection practices act specifically section 1692 e8 and then we'll look at with this letter are there other violations of the law that are happening by this debt collector we'll talk about a timeline about okay you send the letter what what sort of time frame are we talking about and then we'll have some bonus questions or ideas so first of all what does the dispute letter typically say well first of all we want to make it clear in the letter that we are disputing any debt all debt that this debt collector claims that you owe so we want we don't want to get bogged down in typing up account numbers what if we transpose the number you know our account number is one two three four what if we put one three two four well then they go well there is no account one two three or one three two four so the point is i don't wanna mess with that just make it very simple i dispute to you portfolio recovery or amster or lvnv or whoever the company i dispute any debt all debts that you claim to be collecting on me and then we say send me proof and i have four items here so number one is in almost all of these debts are credit card related you know if it's a medical bill then we alter this but where's the application for credit okay show me when i applied and what i applied for okay then number two let me see the card holder agreement okay sometimes this is called the terms and conditions this is the contract because this is what will tell us what's the interest rate what are the late fees what are the over the limit fees all these different details that will make up the debt we need to see the card holder agreement in any amendment so starting at day one when we took out this account all the way through to the last amendment that applies i want to see the contract and all the amendments the number three this is really critical we want to see the monthly statements from the last time i had a zero balance okay so let's say i took out the card ten years ago and three years ago i got it down to zero balance well i'm not saying they have to give me the the monthly statements from 10 years ago but from when i had a zero balance up to whatever the final statement is because i want to see all the charges the payments the credits the fees the expenses like whatever is is going into the math here what added to the amount i owed what subtracted from the amount that i owed and then i want to compare that with that cardholder agreement because what if the cardholder agreement says the late fee is 15 but i find that for two years they've been charging me 45 well that means they're collecting a false balance right that's a big problem for them under the ftcpa and then i want to know what's their authority to collect this debt because i've never done business with this debt collector and particularly for the folks that claim to purchase the debt so we're talking about lvnv midland funding midland credit portfolio recovery calvary jefferson capital those types of guys give me the full purchase agreement because that's what will prove whether or not you really own this debt and then we have in the last part of the letter pretty detailed explanation about i don't want you calling me i don't want you calling anyone else i don't want you calling my work i'm not allowed to get these kind of calls i only want you to communicate with me in writing by mail that is the only convenient method of communication now obviously if you're a client we take care of this for you we want this sent out by certified mail and we want an exact copy of what we sent so we don't want to just have a word document on our computer or google docs we want here's the actual copy of what i sent exactly what was put into certified mount now we use a service out of celebration florida which is orlando florida to handle all of our certified mail but you could do it on your own take it to the post-op you just want a physical copy and a pdf of exactly what you sent so there's no question about that okay so here's one reason we do this we want to gather information on this alleged debt because look maybe we owe it and they send us proof and we go okay i owe this debt this is the right amount well then we can take care of it maybe we do not owe the debt and when they send us the proof we're like you got the wrong person or again like i mentioned in on the last slide maybe they're charging me the wrong interest rate the wrong late fee the wrong over the limit fee well i'm not going to pay a debt that i do not owe and so the pattern is we are looking on our credit report and we see xyz debt collector we're like who in the world is xyz debt collector well rather than just paying money to somebody who we have no idea who they are by the way there are so many scams out there and these scam artists are getting better they're getting more sophisticated you know it's not the guy that can barely speak english who's saying i'm with the irs and send me an itunes gift card okay i mean does that still happen sure but these guys are getting more and more sophisticated and so even though they're on our credit report and that should mean that they're legitimate but we are talking about the credit bureaus here who are pretty notorious for having lousy procedures so to me it's very reasonable before i stroke a check to somebody or give them access to my checking account i need to make sure that i really owe this person the money and i really owe the amount that they're saying so this is very reasonable to go to them and say hey who are you look i dispute these debts send me proof and don't be calling my family my work don't even call me just send me communication through the mail so i know that you're legitimate all right so here's another reason we do it sometimes collectors are not interested in pursuing the debt but they're going to stay on your credit report and this will get rid of them so they will what we call park the account and we started suing over this and and described it in our lawsuits probably 2007 maybe 2006 at least 2007 i mean we filed dozens and dozens and dozens of lawsuits against companies saying hey guys you're just parking an account on our credit report you're not updating it but you know it's wrong and you're leaving it there so it's kind of like if i just parked an old broken down car in your front yard now i don't demand you pay me any money right i'm not sending you letters i'm not riding you but you got this broken down car in your front yard and you're like hey john i want this this broken-down car taken off my yard and i go well i'll do it if you pay me money okay and then my argument would be well i didn't do anything illegal i mean you voluntarily paid me my no it was really extortion okay and that's what these guys do so if they get a very strongly worded dispute letter and they either don't have the account anymore or they've decided internally we're not going to collect on it usually they'll send you a letter it says hey please be advised we have closed your account and instructed the credit bureaus to delete it great and if it doesn't get deleted then you're suing somebody or they won't respond at all they'll just say hey we're deleting the credit reporting either way it's fine as long as the credit boarding gets deleted so the bottom line is we want these debt collectors to say look you need to shut up and go away or you need to put up the proof one of the one or the other here do something here because that will be good for us so here in a lot of ways at the core of what we're doing we want to see will that debt collector mark the account as being disputed this is what section 1692 ea and i talk about this a lot on videos because there's such a powerful law under the fdcpa so here's what it says communicating or threatening to communicate to any person that would include equifax experian transunion nineveh sage stream all these different credit bureaus so communicating or threatening to communicate to let's just substitute the word to any credit bureau credit information which is known or which should be known to be false now they would say well we think it's valid but look at the part angry including the failure to communicate that a disputed debt is disputed they must tell the credit bureaus this debt is disputed if they do not do that then they violate the law so here's what we show number one we sent the letter to them now you can do it verbally over the phone okay so and and we'll try a link to this video but i did a video talking about how you do a pay for delete so you call the company you say i dispute this debt and i would like to talk to you about settling and then if they won't do a pay for delete well remember what you said at the very beginning you disputed this debt so then you see if they update but the point of this video is really doing a dispute letter so number two the collector receives the letter by certified mail if we don't send it by certified mail then and we're talking about a company that's willing to break the law why would we be surprised when they lie i mean we go but surely they got my letter i wanted to say that five bucks or eight bucks or whatever the certified mail is i wanted to save that money well but you can never prove that they received the the letter because they'll just throw it away when they get it so my approach in my office is for my clients we send it by certified amount and then we need the collector to update the credit report now that's not shown in the law 1692 e8 does not say and they must update after the dispute but most courts have said that i disagree with that but that's what the courts say the law is so that's what we'll go with for now collector updates credit report and then the collector does not mark the account as disputed now they have violated section 1692 e8 which means we can sue them all right now we also look for other violations of law so is the collector blowing up your cell phone with robodial calls or text well we told them do not contact me and i didn't put the full letter up but and if you guys are interested in the full letter let me know in the comments and either i'll put that on a video or i'll have a way for you to get access to that but we revoke permission to call us so this may violate the tcpa telephone telephone consumer protection act so this can be 500 or even 1500 per call or text so very powerful now are they calling our neighbors they calling our family members to get information on us well we tell them in the letter i don't want you doing that you don't need to contact anybody okay you can only communicate with me in writing are they calling my work well i told them i'm not allowed to get these kind of calls at work that violates the fdcpa are they calling me after getting me after getting my letter because remember i said the only convenient way for you to communicate with me is in writing are they lying about the amount of the debt so they say that oh three thousand dollars on my credit report but what they send me shows oh 2800 well they're lying or they say well it's made up of all these late fees but then we can show the late fees they're charging too much under the contract or the the the terms and conditions okay so we're just looking at all these different laws the tcpa obviously we're looking at credit reporting which would be the fair credit reporting act we're looking at the fdcpa we may be looking at the efta electronic funds transfer act see are their violations all different things we're looking for so here's a timeline they get your letter then if you don't have a credit monitoring like credit karma or myfico or something like that you can just pull your reports in about 30 to 45 days after the debt collector receives your letter now obviously we'll know that because we can see on certified mail exactly when they receive the letter and then we check to see first of all has it been updated and is it marked as disputed now if it's updated but not marked as disputed and we're not talking about a day or two like if they get my letter on december 1st and december 2nd they update and don't mark it as dispute i'm not going to sue over one day but you know if it's five days later or ten days later then there's no excuse i mean really they should do it within one day but let's give them a day or two okay but they're three days five days seven days ten days so they get our letter and then that time period passes and they update and they don't mark it as disputed then we sue for that and usually just within a couple days of catching them and and this is there's no excuse for this violation of the law okay they know exactly what they're doing we talk about this in other videos but the point of what they do is they do not market as disputed because under most credit scoring models a disputed debt does not have any impact on your credit score well that takes away their leverage and so they don't want to give up their leverage so they just continue to update and they don't market as disputed because 99 99.9 of people won't do anything about it they don't know it's illegal or they say well you know there there's nothing here and consumer lawyers will go yeah i don't want to file that case there's no value in well there is value in it trust me the debt collector money pays just fine and we always insist they delete the account and kill the debt so it's a very valuable case to us and so we sue them they get served a few days after that then depending on what type of court we sue them in they may have 14 days or 30 days to respond and usually by that point they're talking to us and they're giving us all these excuses oh this new employee hit f5 instead of f7 and we're very careful about this and of course we're going yeah we've sued you multiple times for this it's amazing how you always have the same new employee who makes the same mistake on the keyboard just on my client's accounts remarkable really how that happens okay so here's a bonus what if the collector does update with the dispute notification well that means we can't sue under that e8 for failure to mark as being disputed now we look at say did they send proof are they continuing to to collect this amount but they're collecting the wrong amount which means they're doing false credit reporting so that in and of itself does violate e8 the failure to mark is disputed let me just show you this if i go back so the first part that's not highlighted is just saying if you communicate or even threaten to communicate false credit information you violated section e8 and it just gives us an example failure to to communicate a dispute dead as dispute that's just an example but you could mark it as disputed but still be collecting the wrong amount that violates the law okay so we may sue them under that we may need to follow up with another letter hey guys i asked you to give me the statements from when i was at a zero balance to the final statement you gave me the last three statements that's not what i asked for give me these other statements or get rid of this account we may need to sue or maybe there's enough that we're not suing but we're going to that debt collector that debt buyer and say and i tell you what y u've messed up maybe it was a mistake maybe we're being very generous here maybe you didn't intend to do this how about we don't sue you and you get this off of our account and you kill this debt and we give you peace here so there's lots of possibilities i don't have everything on the screen because some of this we would talk to you privately if you're our client but the point is we want to force that debt collector remember what we said on the other side you know either shut up or put up okay so they've got to do something now what if they just don't update it at all remember this is parking the account they get our letter they don't respond they leave it so we look on our credit report and there's some medical bill debt collection or credit card debt collection account on there and yeah i'm recording this on december 16 i think and there's an account from june hasn't been updated since june says we owe 573 well then we would dispute with the credit reporting agencies with the bureaus and we would say to them hey this account is showing it hasn't been updated metro 2 which is the industry standard for the credit bureaus and for the furnitures of information to the credit bureaus including debt collectors that requires monthly updating assuming there's a balance so and i've disputed this debt here's my letter here's the certified mail where they received it they've not responded they've not updated my report they've not shown it as being disputed obviously you can't trust this company they're violating metro too why are you guys letting them violate metro 2 by letting them not update every month delete this account so now we're using the fair credit reporting act which puts liability on the credit bureaus and we're using their own industry standards this is what they put out that they say this is what we need to do to comply with the fair credit reporting guy okay well here's your industry standards we want to get rid of that account or sue that collector or the credit bureaus the credit agencies or both so i hope that this is helpful to you again the right dispute letter sent can have very good consequences for us bad consequences for the debt collector because it's very rare that they will properly mark our account as disputed and send us the proper proof and not violate the fdcpa or some other law so this is a very important step and this is what we typically do for any client when we're looking at their credit reports we go ahead and have the client and usually we do it from our office but the point is we work with our clients to send these letters out and then we see okay what's this debt collector going to do are they going to be smart and go off of our credit report or are they going to be arrogant and refuse to follow the law and then we hammer them in a lawsuit so i hope this is helpful and appreciate you guys watching this and i'll catch you in the next video okay take care bye-bye