Always Send Validation Letter?

Always send a letter to determine whether or not the collection company can legitimately collect on the account.

holy moly,as i live and breathe.teleport,long time no see.teleport is right though.make NCO prove they have the legal rights to the debt.

I did not but I had them send me a settlement letter and it was ok.

Thanks. I'm the original poster. I ask because I did this with another collection agency and they ignored the letter, never responded, and now just sent me a letter of arbitration. I am having to get a lawyer to deal with this and am afraid of another collection agency doing the same thing.

In my experience and from what I have heard is...Do NOT send a DV letter if the account is still owed by the OC, this is outdated advice. You are right it just flaggs the account and the CA sends it back for the OC to act on it. Only send a DV letter when the account has been sold. When a CA gets an account to collect on they must send you a letter saying they are a CA collecting on behaf of the named Creditor.

I have an account with Amex too that has just been sent to collections. So what you are saying is I need to call Amex to find out if the account has been sold rather than assigned to the collection agency?

And if Amex says it has been sold then I don't need to send a debt validation letter/

Call Amex cust service behind your cc and enter your cc no. when prompted and it will tell you where your acct has been sent. One more thing you can do is talk to an amex cust service rep and confirm too. Sometimes the reps are not helpfull but keep trying.

let's get back to the OP'S topic.NCO is a bottomfeeder collector.i would send them a validation letter asap.CMRRR.

Just to clarify what I was saying. If the original creditor still ownes the account don't send a validation letter. But, if the account has been sold send a validation letter to the CA because once its been sold the OC is out of the picture.

Always DV regardless of who owns the debt. OC or JDB. FOAD if it's past SOL and reporting period.