collection attorney-American General

American General sent my account to an attorney. I only owe $398 and was only 2 months behind. I know the account is mine, but I intend to send a DV letter anyway to assure that they are authorized to collect on behalf of AG. I assume collection attorneys are bound to the laws of the fdcpa and anyway the letter had the whole miranda stuff on it.

Is there anything else I can send in the DV to this attorney? Has anyone been sued by AG? Right now I work two part time jobs as an independent contractor and one part time job as a employee. Can they garnish wages from an IC position?

Thanks for everyone's help. I'm sorry to be such a pain but this is the only place I can come and vent. Its gotten to the point where I just don't care about these debts anymore. I'm more concerned about my essential living expenses.

Send the attorney your dv letter. You can place a clause in your dv letter that phone calls are prohibited by employer and inconveinent at home,please limit contact to written method only. I am unsure on garnishments on ic employment.

Creditors having their internal collections dept. are not bound to follow the fdcpa. The laws are applied on outside CAs only.

The attorney should be able to validate the debt if their collection is legitimate. Monitor your credit report closely because you don't want to have any inaccurate reporting from them and after failing to validate.

How is an assignment to an attorney considered inhouse collections? It states debt was sent to a law firm.Under fdcpa if attorney is collecting a debt,he would fall under the laws of it.

I never said that the attorney collecting on the debt of the original poster doesn't fall under the fdcpa guidelines. I gave a simple FYI in case anyone didn't know about the internal collection dept of the creditors. They are not required to abide by the FDCPA. It's the same like a creditor calls the consumers for recovering the debts.

Send a DV letter to the attorney highlighting the FDCPA97 laws. Send the letter CMRRR. This should cover your basis legally.

I did not say did anything wrong.I just did not want to confuse anyone of their basic rights.

There is a certain percentage-- I think maybe 25% -- that if an attorney's business is more than XX% defaulted accounts, than they fall in the same category as a collection agency and must abide by the fdcpa. It would be safe to assume that AG's attorney specializes in collection suits, and therefore would be required to verify the debt.

However, that should be easy for him. Whenever I send a file to my attorney for suit, I always send a detailed calculation of the amount owed, a copy of the original contract, a copy of the credit application and a printout of all our collection notes. Assuming AG sends their attorney this info too, I doubt he will let the verification postpone his court case.

Independent Contractors can be garnished. It is different than a regular wage deduction proceeding, but the judgment creditor can issue a third-party citation against anyone that owes you money. You may end up worse off too -- where wages can only be garnished up to max 25%, since an IC isn't considered wages it can be withheld 100% in some cases until judgment satisfied.

Since I know the debt is mine and I know they can provide signed contract, etc., should I still dispute the debt and ask for validation or just ask for proof that they are authorized to collect on the debt?

I have listed AG in my dmp, they just haven't gotten the proposal yet. As far as my IC postions, I guess I can kiss them goodbye if I get them involved in a legal judgment. I just need a little more time to pay this.

AG would call me 2-3 times a day about this. I told them I get paid on the 15th but the check is mailed not direct deposited. They turned it around to make it I said I would pay them on the 15th. They also one time badgered me into sending a postdated check saying their auditor said it was "okay." They then turned around and put the check in early causing my account to be overdrawn. The original loan was for $500. They agreed to refinance it for me, of course, so they could add more interest. I've been paying on this for awhile and have only gotten the loan down to $398. They're almost as bad as the PDL places!

My husband has a loan with them that is listed with the dmp program. He hasn't had any problems with it and it's almost paid off. It will be in the next few months. There were times that he ran behind as well but he was never contacted by an attorney on the matter. I would still send the DV letter about this. You may also want to contact your debt counselor to let them know about the situation. Maybe they can contact them to work out a suitable payment plan. I know my husband couldn't afford to make a full payment to them when he first entered into his DMP program. He was able to make a finance charge payment to keep current.