david, i cannot believe you have advised her to contact these people without strongly also advising her to check the sol on the acct first, among other things!
generally you
do not contact any debt collector , ESPECIALLY LVNV, without checking more into the background of the so called debt, first. they do alot of illegal and questionable things.
as you can see, they do not operate with your well being in mind and probably not legally, i.e.-letter of offer for payments, then when you contacted them they pull that offer right off the table!
these kind of debt collectors (DCs) are bottom feeders and just buy old debts/debts from other bottom feeders and it goes on and on. and it is legal for them to do that. not legal alot of times how they try to collect these debts. and there are many many of these collectors, collection agencies, debt collectors, etc. it's a giant business in the U.S.
what state are you in kchristie?
dates are very important in a matter such as this. if they filed the info with the credit bureau after the SOL date (
Statute
Of
Limitations for your state) had passed you might be able to dispute it with the credit bureau, send a certain kind of letter, etc.
hopefully someone with more experience than I, on this site , will come along soon. but research this site....use the search box at top of each page, this site is great and has a wealth of info, examples of letters to send, etc.
good luck.