Our client, Lady Z, received a demand letter from a junk debt buyer. Lady Z contacted us immediately and we sent out a Validation letter. A Validation letter is a request to the debt collector to authenticate the debt that they allege is due and owing. The debt collecter in Lady Z’s case did not respond to our request. By law, they have 30 days to respond to our Validation request. If they fail to do so, they may make any further attempts to collect on the debt, and, they must mark the client’s credit record as “disputed”.
In this matter, the debt collector failed to do anything that it was required to do by law. After about 45 days, Lady Z reviewed her credit report and discovered that the debt collector was still reporting this debt as valid, with no dispute listed. We immediately filed a lawsuit against the debt collector in state court. Within a matter of about 3 weeks, debt collector’s attorney contacted us and acknowledged the error. He was willing to eliminate the underlying debt, remove the adverse credit reporting, pay $1000 in statutory damages and pay our attorney fees.
