Internet's first get-out-of-debt community - 133,000 members

Posted: Tue Jan 31, 2006 10:48 am Subject:

Ammetta,

Beware of consumer rights. Debt collectors need to send you some written log before starting collection. You can ask them to send DV first. Send your letter through CMRRR. You have mentioned that the debt is real and valid, still debt validation is important because you must know if this collection agency is legally authorized to collect your account or not.

http://www.debtconsolidationcare.com/fdcpa.html

Once they send the validation, go through it thoroughly. It must include your account details also. If all the items are correct, then only you need to make suitable arrangements for payment. You can offer your own payment plan. You can go on with negotiation with collectors.

If possible, try to contact your creditor and get this account settled with them directly. Hope this helps. Browse this forum and know how to deal this kind of situations.

pinkdiamond · Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2006 9:12 pm Subject: Allied Data Corporation

I got a call from 800-275-7176 Barbara, telling me that me or my attorney need to call the number or something I could not understand was going to happen. The message was very rude and very hard to understand. I do have a debt with Avon. I have not received a debt validation letter. I just printed out my credit report and it doesn't have Avon or Allied Data Corp. on it, so what does this mean? Am I correct in saying that since we no longer have debters prisons they cannot arrest me?

Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2006 11:18 am Subject:

Pinkdiamond,

Yes, you were right about the debtor's prison! Collectors are not allowed to threaten consumers of an arrest.

Ask for debt validation. Since you have admitted that you owe the debt, let them validate it first and check if all the items are correct. Then propose your own payment plan according to your affordability and pay it back. Don't forget to enter into an agreement before paying your installment.

Just curious, how old this debt is? No one can legally force you to pay a past SOL debt. Hoe this helps.

HaveaTake · Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2006 12:00 pm Subject: Dear Hammer,

You suck, bring it on. Your office,courts or anywhere else in H-Town.

angryinokc · Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2006 11:11 pm Subject: Allied Data Corporation

I, too, have recieved their very tacky and highly illegal messages regarding my "account" with Avon. This is in reference on some items I tried to return - 5 times - and had shipped back to me. I told Avon we needed to reach an agreement on shipping charges as they were all coming out of MY banking account for no accord because they weren't accepting the returns. I was told that the issue would be resolved, and then these losers contacted me. Told me I would be arrested, sued, etc. I asked for the attorney's name, docket number on the suit, what court it would be filed in.....*click*. Hung up on me. Called me 5 times a day. Nothing in writing. I sent a cease and desist letter and a dispute letter - both certified mail - and so far silence. Another interesting fact? I called Avon and they said that my account was in in-house collections and they had NEVER authorized my account to be placed with ADC. This is scary. It doesn't show on my credit report, so how the heck did they get my personal info?

Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2006 10:14 am Subject:

angryinokc,

This is scary indeed. You have done the right thing by sending C&D letter to them. Also lodge complaint with FTC, BBB and AG's office.

Also try to get it solved with Avon ASAP and ask them to update your credit report too. It will give you some relief.

DIAMOND517

I have recieved calls from them for two years now I filed chapter 13 in oct, they are liste on my chapter 13 but they call me 15 times daily hang up will only talk to a male voice or machine. I have been told I'm pathetic for my unpaid billed, I called backed due to the hangs up 15 times daily til 10:00 PM from 7134811840 to be nice and advise them that I filed for a lady by the name barbra to tell it was declined. Contacted my attorney to find no they faxed them my filings with court but they still are calling and hanging up 15 times daily so my attorney will be presuing them on futher legal actions. They are rude I have been cursed at by them several times, by a manager too!

Guest · Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2006 3:27 pm Subject:

Bring it big boy! I'll be waiting! Also, you might want to consider something else. I'm debt free, so how can you want to collect? I would so enjoy letting you try to though....

Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2006 3:37 pm Subject:

Guest,

Have they sent you debt validation? You can dispute the debt and send them cease & desist letter if the debt is not yours. They have to obey your C&D letter; you can file complaint against them otherwise.

Neaka

I had a voice mail when I came in this pm from Allied stating that either I or my lawyer needed to contact them by noon tomorrow. I called and was told I owe AVON $43.67. This is the first I have ever heard concerning any balances I may have had when I stopped selling AVON. I called and asked the Allied rep. for documentation and she refused and said I either agree to pay or be turned over to their legal dept. I asked for their address and the amount owed but DID NOT in any way tell her I was sending any monies. Today is the 1st and she says my payment has to be received in Houston by the 6th. Are they serious? I've not sold AVON since around 2002. My husband and I refinanced our home and "we" bought me a new truck for Mother's Day last year. Am I stupid to think no one at either of these two banks would have asked why I refuse to pay AVON $44.00? We are in our mid 30's and have MOST EXCELLENT credit. I don't want to see it shot to pieces because of $44. and I don't want to pay a lawyer a huge amount of money to fix this in four days. I sent AVON an email through their website but I don't hold out any great hopes of help from them. Their representative customer service sucked and was long distance when I was a rep. and making them money so I don't look for a miracle to take place because of help from them. I would appreciate any ideas.

Guest · Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2006 3:43 am Subject: Allied

Quite interesting I had the exact same message left for me when I got home this evening. Did not have a chance to call them back but the gentleman that left the message was very rude.
thank goodness I found this site.

Gooberlily · Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2006 1:20 pm Subject:

Holy ****. Going to be a long post, please bear with me and read it if you have had problems with Avon/Allied.
You know, this whole Avon/Allied thing deserves REAL close scrutiny, and I would love to see a lawsuit come from it. I think waaaaay too many people here have been annoyed, threatened, etc.

My situation is very similar to Neaka and Guest--just got called yesterday by a "Tracy" from Allied about $40 owed to Avon.

Funny thing?

Haven't worked for Avon since 2001 (at the most) and I was all paid up when I stopped working for them. They have not sent me any letters that I owed anything, so I was really shocked when I got a phone call from Miss Rude yesterday. It took me until today to get enough time on the computer to find this wonderful message board--but I thought I'd share with you a complaint I filed yesterday with consumer affairs (ConsumerAffairs.com) to give some background on events as of yesterday:

Incident = Today, 3/1/2006 I received a call from Allied Data Corp., a
collection agency. I was in the middle of doing dishes and making
lunch for my daughter when I was told by "Tracy" that I owed $40 to Avon.

I had to ask her to repeat herself, since I was in shock, being that I
hadn't worked for Avon except for a brief stint in 2000 or 2001. Any
balances I had were paid. I got the, "Well ma'am, this is the information we have." I said, "Well then, somebody's going to be in trouble." I was cut off mid sentence, "How is that possible, ma'am? They're not in trouble, this is your debt." I continued, "Because I have not heard one word from Avon in at least 5 years, and if there was a *balance* owed, shouldn't I have gotten some sort of phone call, email or letter in the mail? I have not gotten anything that said I owed any money." Tracy then said, "Well, this is something you have to talk to Avon about."

I asked Tracy for the number she had to contact Avon and she gave me the number 1-800-4-Avon. (Turned out to be 1-800-FOR-Avon, obviously.)

So, I called.

I eventually navigated through the automated system and finally found a customer service rep. Shereferred me to another number, 513-551-2866 because she couldn't help me.

Dialed that number and was told by the nice and friendly automated voice, "the estimated amount of time until your call is received is between 22 and 28 minutes." They had an option to leave your phone number and get a call back, so I did that.

Meanwhile, I tried to contact Allied again, but was sent through to an answering machine, where I said I was waiting for a call back from Avon.

Avon did call back an estimated half hour later where I spoke with a lady "Sherry" who seemed like she was falling asleep on the phone. I began the call by giving her a synopsis of the situation so she didn't
ask me for my customer number, etc.

After 5 minutes of her trying to find my name in the Avon system, by using my maiden name (it was that long ago I worked for Avon) and address...zip code, she came up with nothing.

According to Avon, I don't even exist. But, I owe them $40.

So, Sherry, after I asked her, gave me a number for their collections department - 1-302-453-7605.

Problem? It was now 4:41 and they close at 4.

I called back "Tracy\" at Allied and explained I tried to call the first number and was transferred. "Oh, yes, you would have been transferred because that's the customer service number, this is a collection."

GRRRRRR! Then why not give me the RIGHT number in the first place!

So, what this rambling post boils down to is this:

I have not ordered or worked for Avon in at least 5 years. They said I owed them money, but instead of doing the *business like* thing to do and actually *inform* me that I "owed" money, they did not tell me and just handed it to a collection agency, who now says I owe that 40 bucks, and the lawyers are preparing a case.

So, my credit rating is now in jeopardy, thanks to Avon and their amazing business acumen.

Somehow tomorrow I have to find where this is coming from and have Avon contact the credit agency to have this reversed. I'm also filing complaints. Hell, if I could I'd just sue them for the annoyance and aggravation. It's not about the 40 dollars--it's about not being able to defend yourself against something you know nothing about, until it's
too late.

Honestly, I'd rather spend my time on other things, wouldn't you?

------------------------------

Now, taking a look at that...does any of it sound familiar?

Incidentally, when I called up the collections department at Avon today...three times...once in the morning, once at 12:52 p.m. and once at 3:10 p.m. - just now in the afternoon. Each time I got a recorded message saying it's the Collection's department and to leave a message for a call back. Nobody's calling back.

Today I did my best to annoy Tracy at Allied. First of all, yesterday, when I asked for her extension she gave me a phoney one of 3412...which when I called her this morning was invalid. Too bad for her I still had the extension I called her on yesterday originally, which was 609. Reading over former posts here, 609 is an extension mentioned before. Gee, is poor Tracy only working there with one or two other people, maybe? Who knows.

Anyhow, when I called the *right* extension I began by asking, "Tracy?" and she answered, "Yes?" in a familiar and happy tone. Then I told her who I was, LOL...and got the "oh...it's YOU..." type of voice.

I told her what was going on with Avon, of course she didn't care, but then I continued by asking her politely for the name and number of "their attorneys."

Instead of telling me she said she'd transfer me. I then hear a recorded message saying it's the office of "David Layman" in a Texan accent. Could be David Lehman, don't know the spelling. Left a message for him to call me back, with my name and details.

Of course I haven't gotten a call back. And after putting in Mr. "Layman's" name in several variations in search engines, have not been able to find him as an Esq. Smile

He may be, of course, but this is just silly.

I'm keeping a log of all of my phone calls and conversations with people at Avon and Allied, and I suggest people here do the same. I'm just a legal secretary, not an attorney, but I know enough about the law that it would be helpful.

BTW, look it up on the internet...Avon had as of 2002 or 2003 a case against it that almost hit class-action status regarding billing their reps for amounts they didn't owe.

~ Liz in NY

Gooberlily · Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2006 1:58 pm Subject: Allied

Two links of interest:

ripoffreport.com/view.asp?id=128175&view=printer

~ Liz

Link deleted as per forum rules-Mike

Gooberlily · Posted: Fri Mar 03, 2006 8:49 am Subject:

3/3/2006

Got a call back from �Karen� at Avon, 10:31 a.m. I explained the situation and said I needed them to call Allied and have the charges reversed. She said she would send a letter to Allied, agreeing I didn't owe any money so that they would stop bothering me, and took down my Allied customer number and home address, because I said I needed a copy of the letter she was sending to Allied.

I couldn't get any more information because I was being rushed off the phone by Karen, but it makes me wonder how this happened in the first place, why Allied ever got my information and insisted that I owed Avon money (!?)

I called Allied Data Corp. and asked for Tracy, was transferred and told her that I DIDN'T owe any money according to Avon (haha, that felt nice at least to be able to say that), I told Tracy Avon called me back, and they would be receiving their confirmation from the company. Tracy was polite and said okay, that it would be taken care of, and that's that.

So, things have been cleared up on my end here, but I still feel it's ridiculous that someone should be treated in such a way, harassed in the first place, and a collections agency should have my personal information when I owed nothing! I've made probably at least ten phone calls in the last two days and it's taken up a large chunk of my personal time to rectify a situation almost beyond my control.

I wish people here the best of luck with their own problems with Allied, (or Avon/Allied) and someone gets to the bottom of this (ideally, the court system) sooner rather than later. With issues of identity theft so common out there today, it makes my skin crawl to wonder about how many other companies out there have my (or your) personal information with no right to have it in the first place.

~ Liz

Gooberlily · Posted: Fri Mar 03, 2006 9:24 am Subject:

11:08 a.m.

Called back Tracy to find out if I could get a debt validation letter, being that the case was/is still open until they receive official word from Avon (?). Tracy said, �We don't send out debt validation letters.� I said that according to what I knew they were responsible for sending out debt validation letters to inform the people they're �suing� of their debt. She said that would be handled by a different department, they didn't do that there. She asked if I would like to speak to a manager, he would tell me the same thing.

I said yes, I would like to speak with a manager. I was transferred, unfortunately did not get the man's name. He was curt, though not overtly rude. I explained that before the case was closed with Avon I needed some sort of documentation from their side explaining when they got the account, �Oh, we would have gotten that back when you selled for Avon.� I said, �Well I worked for Avon five years ago.� He was quiet for a minute and then got a little more distressed sounding and angry. I explained that something didn't make sense somewhere, if I didn't owe Avon money, how could they have my name? He insisted and stuck to a basic story, reiterating it several times that they just get the information from Avon, and there's nothing they can send me.

After trying to get a straight answer, and requesting documentation from them that he said they would not give me, I said, �Okay, I'll be in contact with my attorneys.�

He said, �Great.�

and hung up.

Any thoughts?

Posted: Fri Mar 03, 2006 12:28 pm Subject:

IMO, you should wait to see what Avon does for you. Does your state allow to record conversation? If you had recorded your discussion with Avon, it would be of great help. Anyway, let's see what they do with this. Keep us posted.

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