"Mindless zombies?" Please watch your language! Those are Financial Logistical Waste Management & Conflict Resolution Specialists you're talking about.

Ray

PS: You have to have a mind to have a "mindset."

Thanks very much for your reply Raymond... very clearly written giving me a better understanding of the collection agencies' mindset and tactics, and several practical suggestions on what steps to take next ... not to mention very empowering.

"You can send them a registered letter demanding you are to be contacted in future only by mail..." AND "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 ..."

You can bet I will definitely be doing these...

HOWEVER... here is yet another interesting twist to this situation... they, the CC company, sent me mail today (their logo attached), offering me their PRE-QUALIFIED CC (my card having been canceled ), if I pay the present overdue amount in full and meet all their listed criteria... of course I must call Iquor, who is now "managing" the account to do this! Well, doesn't that just beat all... LOL.... Has anyone had this happen to them before?

- This must be just another one of the CC company's or collection agency's ploy to get me to pay up?

-How in their right minds could they believe I would want another of their cards despite their absolutely awful treatment of me over the last several months?

-Furthermore, where the dickens do they think I'm going to find the money to pay them off now when I couldn't pay them in full before?

These people are truly NUTS... and mindless zombies as Raymond says...

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

I'm afraid the Angella's statement has no truth whatsoever in Ontario, In some provinces like Manitoba, they do have to give you an account statement, but not in Ontario.

In any event, in any province, any collection agent can sue you as long as they have the creditor's permission. There's a lot of these old telephone accounts and parking tickets being revived again as a last attempt at collection. But no one is going to sue you over it. However, if it's the same company, your telephone carrier might cut you off so that you'll have to go with another carrier if they do. Hard to say what's going on in their internal accounts dept. and their collection strategy is.

Ray

"3) Tell them you dispute owing the debt and you require the original creditor to sue you for it. Legally they are not allowed to attempt to contact you to collect this debt once they have been told that. "

Angella,

This, I don't recall hearing about before. Are you aware of a document that backs up the above statement? I'm thinking that if the Agency purchased the debt, then wouldn't they become the legal owner of it, hence giving them rights to sue for the outstanding balance?

If that's not the case, then why would anyone fear being sued by a C.A.? If your statement is accurate, then perhaps that's the leverage many debtors can (and should) use to their advantage during settlement negotiations.

O.C.

With the old telephone bill, it is past SOL. There are a few ways you can handle this..

1) Simply tell them it's past SOL. Send them a cease and desist letter.

2) Ask them for statements from the phone company proving the debt is valid, for the amount they are asking, and yours. Legally they cannot attempt to collect the debt until they have provided this and, in some provinces, they are required to provide you with a letter stating they cannot provide it and why if they cannot do it within a set time period. When they ignore this law and call you anyway, simply state you have not received the verification you asked for and hang up. For extra fun you can call them on a regular basis and ask them for it. They will begin to dread your phone calls as much as you are now dreading theirs.

3) Tell them you dispute owing the debt and you require the original creditor to sue you for it. Legally they are not allowed to attempt to contact you to collect this debt once they have been told that.

Angella... thanks for the reply... i will be sending a cease and desist and looking into your suggestions... and a few others.

Alas, when it rains it pours...
Today I received a letter from another collection agency (Recover Corp) claiming I owe hundreds for a delinquent telephone acct from August 2002! What! I've been with the same phone company for over 15 years! How the heck could I owe them money? I spent hours with this phone company trying to figure it out, trying to locate the acct and how this happened. The phone company says they have no clue how it happened (me being with them and having a delinquent acct at the same time), no info on the acct except to tell me they sold it back in 2002, and cannot give me any more info on it. Fact is I am up to date with this phone company and they even owe ME money... go figure eh?!

Sigh, I am so exhausted with this crap... I figure this new collector falls into the SOL category, but now i have to go look through this site as to what to do with SOL situations... more work to do.

As for my original problem... that too requires lots of work.
Montyloree, my score is in the low 600 in transunion and I couldn't afford to buy the fico score also in equifax, but i imagine it's the same .

There are accts from over 10 years ago listed on my transunion file and some accts have wrong reporting dates and info (for example I closed an acct in 2000 but they reported last activity in 2004).

Equifax is more updated, yet they too have wrong info on some accts. Problem is, I'm really going to have to fight to get this stuff corrected (where to find proof after years)...

However on both reports the only problem is with that CC company and it states "derogatory, over 90 days late" in transunion and "at least 90 days past due (2008-03), (2008-04), (2008-05)" in equifax 3 times for 3 mths.

At this point I am so stressed I just don't know what to do... normally I'm a rational, logical... clear thinking person, but this situation is rendering me useless. One turn of bad fortune, which lead to one unintentional, accidental mistake, and I am now faced with one big mess! AARG!

Collection agencies don't always buy debt. Usually the creditor starts off by assigning the debt to a collection agency... and the agency makes a commission off the amount of money they collect. If the creditor decides he won't likely see his money after a certain period of time he will sell it off cheaply to get some money out of it.

If it were me I would start by contacting the credit card company... you'll probably need to speak to somebody in charge offs or delinquint accounts. Ask them if they've sold the debt or simply assigned it to a collection agency. If they have assigned it, explain your situation, point out that you have been sending in regular payments to the credit company and will continue to do so, tell them that you cannot and will not deal with the collection agency... especially in light of their treatment of you... and ask them to recall the debt from the collection agency. Perhaps pointing out that consumer protection is currently investigating the situation would be a good idea too.

I don't know who the credit card company is, but some of them will work with you.

As for the collection agency... yes, send them a cease and desist.Hopfully consumer protection will help you as well... meanwhile, pick up a recorder and tape all your calls from them... keep all correspondence... read the relevant collections act for your province, and let the collection agency know when they are misbehaving. Finally, hang up with they are abusive. There is no reason to sit on the phone and listen to them.

when you have a look at your credit score with equifax and transunion let me know that..

You can get your credit reports with credit scores online.

http://www.equifax.ca and http://www.tuc.ca

Your credit score will tell me how bad the situation is.
If you've had perfect credit until 3 months ago, it might not be that bad.

Best thing to do at the moment is keep in touch with the creditors and send them token payments to let them know that you're still interested in dealing with them.

If possible, clear up the payments for the last 3 months... is that possible to do?

In the meantime, if the collection agent hasn't reported to your credit report, you maybe still in good shape.

Hi montyloree,

thanks for your reply.. to answer you,

- I don't know what it looks like on my credit report, but I plan on taking a look at that tomorrow

-I've had this CC for about 10 years, but only just defaulted in Feb this year... 3 mths not paid so they sent it to collection

-just over $5000 is owing