First of all, no collection agency is going to change an account that's already R9 (which means it's been written off or sent to collections) back to an R5 or R3. If you pay it off, in whole or in part, they'll just leave it as R9 and mark it "settled" or "paid." Collection agents are pathological liars and woud sell their grandmother for a nickel if they could. However, it will look better or your credit report than if it was unpaid. Nevertheless, it will still seriously damage your credit (score) no matter what you do.
Consumer Protection down on 250 Yonge Street is a joke. A complete waste of time. The Registrar is working with the guy on the link below.
http://www.collection-calls.ca/articles/help-settling-debt-with-creditors.html
Read the link's pages for info only.
Consumer "Protection" meant for you to ask the credit card company to take the credit card back so that you could once again deal with them instead of the collection agency collection agencies. That was stupid because they should know these companies have contracts with the agencies. Once it's sent out, it's never taken back, only sold or rotated to another collection agency, which has been done in your case.
TCR and iQor, Inc formerly CBCL - Canadian Bonded Credit Limited - Now Iqor Collection Agency (now iQor), didn't buy the debt; instead, they only tried collect on it. Dealing with anyone at TCR would be like dealing with ....... well, like dealing with Deanna Natale. Good luck. All you can do with people like that is hammer them back or see them in court.
Further the creditor has to give permission for the collection agency to sue you. If the credit card company was going to sue you they would have done it by now, one would think. The fact that you have no significant income or assets is a big factor in the decision. In Ontario, they have 2 years to sue you from when you missed your last payment basically. But, you keep renewing it every time you make a payment. And so, if you waited it out for a few months without paying further or without getting sued, that would probably mean that they weren't going to sue you at all.
Alternatively, you might get one of those phoney "Draft" Small Claims Court "Statements of Claim" threatening you are scheduled to be sued. If you do, you can a breathe a sigh of relief because it means they have no intention of actually doing so. (You probably will still owe them some money morally when you can pay at a later date, but we are only talking about legalities here).
And so to answer your questions.
1. You can send them a registered letter demanding you are to be contacted in future only by mail. By telephone they are only allowed to contact you 3 times in 7 days. They may or may not obey. If they don't, don't bother complaining to Consumer Protection. All they're good for is collecting licence fees. There is no enforcement of collection agency behaviour in Ontario.
You have to rely on yourself for defence. Asking them for their licence number or your account statements, like many have suggested on this forum, is a stupid waste of time. Agencies like iQor, Inc formerly CBCL - Canadian Bonded Credit Limited - Now Iqor Collection Agency (iQor) are famous for helping to drive people to deal with credit (or actually succeeding in the case of John E. Dowling). To them it's all a joke. It's all so unnecessary, but you have to learn how to protect yourself. Many are unwilling and so all that can be said to them is, "Learn to suffer then."
If iQor ( iQor, Inc formerly CBCL - Canadian Bonded Credit Limited - Now Iqor Collection Agency ) continues to call you, start off by calling the ombudsman, Debbie Bilowus (a recycled collection manager from Alberta) @ 1-888 804-8198 and tell her that every time you get a call, she will. Don't worry, you won't hurt anyone's feelings; they don't have any - they're all mindless zombies. Then escalate it to 5 calls for each recording you get. (They really hate that.) Better, get the VP or President and increase it to 10 and then 20. See how long they last when they are given a taste of their own medicine.
I know one guy a couple of years ago who had iQor, Inc formerly CBCL - Canadian Bonded Credit Limited - Now Iqor Collection Agency (iQor) begging for mercy, so badly they called the cops. The cops just laughed because everyone knows what collection agencies are like. I'm not suggesting you go that far, but if you want to defeat their autodiallers, that's the way to do it. I also realize that lawyers like Silverthorne aren't allowed to advise this when dealing with collection agents. That's because their Rules of Professional Conduct prohibit it. They have to advise you to send in a letter to Consumer Protection even though they know it's completely worthless. Hell, how many bogus Court "Draft" Form 7A's did Deanna Natale send out? That's against the Law Society but what was ever done?
Also, if TCR calls you again, call owner George Krieser's personal office at (416) 774-4100. And keep doing it until the bluffer threatens you. Don't worry, the old pirate won't do anything. He just cares about his money.
VQ, 1(b) - 2
Negative credit reporting items will stay on your credit reports for 6 years from the "date of last activity." It's quite an involved term and not well understood. See my recent posts for how this is supposed to be defined.
It would not be in your best interests to pay the credit card company any money directly.
What to do? My suggestion - and it's only one person's - is that I would
(1) Try to negotiate a WRITTEN settlement on the account on terms that I could reasonably afford with no more accrued interest. If the account is already R9, it can't get any worse on both Equifax and TransUnion. Thus there's not much point in taking the money from friends and relatives to pay off a bunch of miserable collection agencies.
(2) The problem with (1) is that it likely won't work even though it makes sense for all concerned. As Silverthorne points out, many creditors are totally inflexible and won't consider a penny less than 85% with accruing interest at 18.9%. As well, even in those instances where the creditor gives the collection agency some slack in negotiating, collection agencies, being what they are, almost always want their money at once. (If you don't believe me go down to the zoo and watch them feed.)
Consequently, the tactic I personally would try is to tell them to go ahead and sue me. No more phone calls: to court we go! The sooner the better! It's really true. You don't want the matter dragging out and having all that potential pre-judgment interest building up any longer than necessary.
At that point, especially when you call the creditor up also and tell them, if a decision hasn't already been made on whether to sue you, it soon will be.
The strategic point is that you want them to put their cards on the table. They've already sized you up long before now in determining what assets and income you have through the Ontario PPSA and other bureau reports.
If you hadn't made any payments since last year, then it's most likely they would have sued by now if they ever intended to.
But you've made payments to them, shown them you are intimidated and frightened and tried to negotiate at least some decent settlement. In predator language, that means that you are a promising candidate and they will keep working you over until they get what they want. You see, if the creditor were really going to sue, they would likely hold back since the prospects of recovery without having to go to court are promising.
On the other hand, the fact that the account has already been rotated to a second agency tends to indicate that litigation isn't their intent or they would have done it by now. This is the more probable of the 2.
Whatever, you want to get rid of the uncertainty. By adamantly telling them you will make no more payments and to sue, you will force their hand. If they decide to do so, in Ontario, a pre-settlement conference is mandatory before the actual Small Claims Court trial. I'm sure the terms you could obtain there would be much easier than anything they are demanding.
But the thing is, neither the creditor NOR the debtor should ever want the thing to go to actual trial. For the debtor, they would get a judgment registed against them which would stay on credit reports for 7 years after the date of judgment as well as accumulate post judgment interest.
For the creditor, it's not always a good deal either. The debtor could declare bankruptcy. As well, almost certainly, any judge, if the debtor explained the difficult circumstances they were in, will give the debtor an easy payment schedule; something far less, than they would have gotten if they settled outside of court. It all depends how sincere and legitimate the debtor appears to the judge. I've seen hard up people owing more money than you get off with 20 or 25 bucks a month. Other cases, where the judge thought that the defendant was deliberately screwing everyone around got hit with 1000 bucks a month.
Whatever! Your intent is for it never to come to trial. But even in the wost case scenario, with a mandatiory pretrial settlement conference it's hard to see how you could not come out far ahead.
Ray