Well at least that is something good about Canada. It makes you wonder though why these slimy companies keep up their bluffing,is there really that many people that do fall for their tricks? You would think that if the debtors managed to not get sued when the creditors had the legal right to sue.Why do they think they will catch them once the SOL has kicked in. But just by the way there are so many companies doing it they must be catching enough to make it worthwhile.

It's unlikely ARO would be able to get away with that in Canada. In some American states, the SOL has a slightly different interpretation. In several U.S. court districts - at least according to many U.S. lawyers I've read - you can still file a lawsuit against a person over a stats barred debt and even obtain a default judgement if they don't contest it. The limitation period MUST then be used as a reverse onus defence, they claim.

Anyhow, in Ontario, the judge would want to see the account statements and examine their dates. If they did manage to sneek one by a judge, the defendant would have to file a Form 15 Motion to set aside the default judgment and use the SOL period as a basis of what his defence would have been had he received a Statement of Claim in time to appear at the original trial.

ARO (probably, their Kelowna, BC office) trys this bluffing crap on people all the time. They're as mindless as the zombies at iQor, Inc formerly CBCL - Canadian Bonded Credit Limited - Now Iqor Collection Agency or CBV.

Ray

Just a couple of questions for anyone on here.
1 I had a national bank mastercard that was unpaid with a last activity date of may 1995.Last year i received a couple of letters and phone calls from iQor, Inc formerly CBCL - Canadian Bonded Credit Limited - Now Iqor Collection Agency and after telling them to take a hike i didnt hear from them again. The letters were in french only but i could read enough to know it was the usual collector crap. This year i received a couple of letters from ARO for the same debt.It was the usual crap but in the letter it said they will pursue this debt the same as they would if it was their own. My question is, isnt it odd that mastercard would still be hanging on to this rather than sell it to a debt buyer.Or is the ARO letters a standard letter they send or do they own the debt and they are just lying.
2 I have read about these companies sneaking judgements on people on SOL debts.If they have to prove the debt is valid in court and they get a judgement on an SOL debt. They have to of lied or did something to change the date. Once they get caught is that not a case of fraud and being it was in court shouldnt that be a very serious charge.? Thaks

What constitutes the legal SOL date and what is SUPPOSED to be the "date of last activity" was explained in point 4 of my July 21, 2008 response to your first inquiry. The "date of last activity" is also defined at the top of page 8 of the 19 page pdf document put out by ththe Financial Consumer Agency of Canada on consumer credit reporting and scoring (which I posted a couple of times already).

http://www.fcac-acfc.gc.ca/eng/publications/CreditReportScore/PDF/CreditReportScore_e.pdf

If the debt does not show up on your Credit reports I would not risk paying it and having it on there for another 6 years. If the debt was from 1999 and they purchased it in 2002 they are not allowed to report it was debt started in 2002. This debt is past the limitations period and no one can sue you at this point. I would simply not speak with them and if you do, ask them for proof of the debt and nothing more.

So, ARO calls yesterday and says they are offering "end of month deals" and says they'll take $380 to pay this now $1000 debt off. I guess the best thing to do is just not pay it still since its so old? From the sounds of things, if I pay the debt, it'll then show up (likely) on my credit history as a settled debt, where right now it isn't on there.

My mistake earlier -they took this debt in 2002, but the debt started in 1999.
-- the SOL is when the debt started with the original company the money was owed to? ie, ARO can't 'buy the debt' and the SOL starts over?

Thanks for answering Raymond. I guess it is just like everything else where if people can get away with something they will keep doing it. I guess until enough people complain the governing parties will just leave it alone. Its sad though that they do get away with illegal activities and they dont get punished.

That's an easy one which has been answered many times. There are laws in place but they are not enforced.

Wayne Macleod, the "vice" president of Total Credit Recovery synopsized the situation well 2 weeks ago, when while taking a break from chasing down accident victims, he asserted that collection agency rules were regarded as "guidelines" [optional] in the industry.

Hell, the Registrar for Collection Agencies, Brian Pitkin, used to work for the enforcement dept in the Sheriff's office.

Ray

I have a question for you Raymond. With the way these agencies do things to credit reports that they shouldn't ,is there any laws in force to punish them or take their licences away.It seems these clowns are constantly breaking rules and getting away with it. I can only imagine what they would get away with if there wasn't forums like this to make people aware.

This is another question of general interest that occurs a hundred times a day.

The debt was originally defaulted during 1999 in Ontario. Thus it became stats barred 6 years later in 2005 under the limitation period that existed in 1999.

ARO (probably, their branch in Kelowna BC) bought up the debt in 2001, probably for one tenth of a cent on the dollar, and now they want their money back with interest in 2006. ($1000! Gulp!) The debtor agrees to pay the principle over the phone.

What should be done?

Sometimes this sort of problem is a more difficult than meets the eye because collectors will try the following tactics

1. Lie to the person that the debt is not stas barred. ARO does this, but what the hell, they all do. Heck ARO has evened threatened to have the RCMP arrest the debtor.

2. Well, ok the debt is not stats barred but it's been reneweed through an acknowledgment. Rubbish, you can't renew an unsecured consumer debt even if you make a full page admission of it in the Toronto Star.

3. We'll call you all the time for the rest of your life untill you do pay. Actually, this is not ARO's style.

4. We'll screw your credit report by reporting it to the bureau. This is where things can get more complicated because it involves actions over which the debtor has no control. In this example, fortunately, because of the small amount, the debt has not been referred to the credit bureaus- assuming the blogger has checked both TransUnion and Equifax.

If the amount had been larger, ARO's standard modus operandi would be to keep putting hard inquiries on the person's file to blackmail them into paying. In Ontario, the Consumer Reporting Act, Section 9.3(f) (i),(ii) doesn't allow information to be disclosed on debts which have had no payments made on them for more than seven years and so information on this account would have to be removed. The policies of Equifax and TransUnion differ slightly in some ways with the Provincial Consumer Act in their "trade" sections. They use 6 years from the date of "last activity," and they define the date of "last activity" as when the account originally, went into default. The Consumer Reporting Act defines it as when any collection is made on the account that wasn't previously stats barred. It gets worse because collection agencies and debt buyers often report the date of last activity as being the date that you last made a payment to a collection agency. i.e. If in 2008, you made your first payment on a credit card that went delinquent in 2004, they'll probably report the date of last activity as being 2008. The only way to amend these errors is to challenge them. There are many more considerations, especially with respect to hard inquiries, too lengthy to go into here.

5. In this case, if the debtor pays the ARO collection agencies any money, he runs the risk of getting it reported as a settled account to the bureaus. Legally, that wouldn't be allowed because it's in excess of the statutory 7 year period and the 6 year bureau periods; it could be staightened out but would involve time and trouble. Having said that, considering the small amount involved, this was doubtlessly, a small file, one of thousands, that was lying in their dormant cabinet, that was dug out to give a junior hyena some morsels to nibble on. Therefore even if the blogger pays it, it probably won't get reported if hasn't been all this time.

Ray