Caller ID said JenCare Medical. I've never heard of them, but since medical was in the name I answered in case someone I know might be in the hospital or something. When I answered they said there was a complaint against me and they had to forward me to the complaints department. The woman said her name was Lisa Summers and she claimed to be Santander wondering when I would pay a car debt I owed. I explained the debt had been purchased by another company and I'd been paying them for two years. She said her records show they had not received a payment since 2013. She offered to reach out to them and said I could send her receipts to show I'd made the payments, but in the meantime I could settle with them today $1100. I told her that I did not want to send them anything until I figured out what was going on and made sure they weren't a scam. She started getting really combative and saying they are a multi-million dollar company and they don't need my money. And if I didn't want to pay them today that they'd just issue a judgement and see me in court. I said fine, go ahead and do that and hung up.
Lisa Summers works for a company called Miller, Stark, Klein & Associates out of North Carolina. Their email address is: [email protected] You can send them a cease & desist notice via email.
>> You can send them a cease & desist notice via email. <<
Maybe so ... but it won't work.
A Certified snailmail + a regular snailmail is a legal notification.
A phone call, email, text message or postcard from a supposed debt collector is not legally sufficient proof of debt.
The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) includes statements such as this:
Unless the original communication contained this specific information, every collector must send you a written “validation notice” telling you how much money you owe within five days after they first contact you. This notice also must include the name of the creditor to whom you owe the money, and how to proceed if you don’t think you owe the money. ["Written" means snailmailed - US Mail ... not emailed or texted]
Therefore, if that caller wants you to pay immediately, before you get the written validation notice via snailmail, or if the caller wants payment via Green Dot, MoneyGram, Western Union, prepaid gift card or other untraceable means, then the call is definitely not legitimate.
REMEMBER THIS IF YOU FORGET ALL ELSE:
1. Legally, THEY must prove you owe the debt (you do not have to prove to them that you do not owe the debt)
2. They must prove they have a legal right to collect the debt
3. They must send you snailmail with specific info within 5 days of the original contact, if you request that validation notice, or if that information was not provided on initial contact. You have up to 30 days to reply to that letter.
IF you wish to communicate with the supposed collector / creditor, visit the following page, for example "Action Letters" to snailmail:
http://www.consumerfinance.gov/blog/debtcollection/
If you KNOW you owe no money, or believe the call was from a fake debt collector, please take the time to read this:
http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0258-fake-debt-collectors
~~~~~~~~
Please reply to this post, to let us know you read it, or have taken suitable actions to protect yourself.