LHR adds up statements to arrive at the total owed?
The saga continues and here are my previous posts regarding this Lewis Hastings Receivables (LHR) collection.
The brief summary:
In March my client first contacted me about her two BofA charge-offs. LHR reported that my client owed over $7,500 and that the original amount was $6,500. She had originally disputed with BofA because she had been unable to make her payments online from overseas—contrary to their promises. She also thought that she settled the BofA accounts in 2006 with another collector.
My client lost her job in April and then had emergency surgery and she just came back from her stay with family.
To make things more complicated, some moron tried to serve her right after she got out of the hospital and to make a long story short, I found out that ANOTHER debt buyer was sueing her for a BofA account. Apparently they decided not to pursue the lawsuit as I didn’t get a response to my last fax to the attorney and my client was not served. The process server told the building manager that he was trying to serve a collection lawsuit and I had an interesting “chat” with his boss about that—will post the transcript in a new entry. Obviously, it is an FDCPA violation to disclose to 3rd parties that the lawsuit is for debt collection.
So we disputed with LHR and the credit bureaus and they VERIFIED without dispute notation in April. After some correspondence, they finally provided 3 BofA statements for one of the BofA accounts in June. It’s truly INCREDIBLE that LHR refused to inform us when and from who they purchased the account so that we could research what exactly my client settled.
In July LHR sent another collection letter, pretending that they just purchased the account and acting as if there was NO dispute. Since my client was out of the country while recovering from surgery, we had put everything on hold until she came back a few weeks ago. Just as I was getting ready to work on the FTC complaint, Allison from the LHR “Mediation Department” left a voicemail for me on Monday.
When I finally got to talk to Allison, I thought I wasn’t hearing right. She is adding up the statements for about $2,500 each to arrive at the insane $6,500 they claim was the amount of the original debt. I’ve never seen anything so crazy and she assured me that it was for ONE account. Since the statements they mailed to me seem to be DIFFERENT statements, I asked her to fax what she was looking at and she promised to do so. However, I haven’t received anything.
Here is my fax to Allison, requesting the statements:
Dear Allison:
Last Monday, 10/12/09, you promised to fax me the Bank of America statements adding up to $6,499.81. I really don’t have any idea how you come up with this amount.
We did receive the 6/8/09 letter demanding $7,738.25 from J. P. Michael, Department Manager, LHR. Enclosed were three B of A statements:
4/9/04 balance: $2,551.33
5/9/04 balance: $2,661.37
6/9/04 balance: $2,487.27I asked you on Monday how you arrived at the total owed and you stated that the statements add up to $6,499.81 and that the rest was interest.
When I add up the statements, I get a total of $7,699.97. I asked you several times WHY you are adding up the statements, but you did not provide a coherent answer. Obviously, you must be looking at DIFFERENT statements and you promised to fax the documentation. However, I received no fax from you.
You also stated that you do not wish to receive the draft of my regulatory complaint with the FTC and state AGs. However, I will wait until Friday to send the complaints to give you a chance to fax to me the statements I’m apparently missing.
Providing all documentation for this alleged debt by 10/16/09 is especially important because our regulatory complaints are published and will be provided to consumer attorneys and to Dateline for a followup on its collection documentary.
Please see http://creditsuit.org/credit.php/blog/C188/ for details.
Sincerely,
Christine Baker
I will update with either the LHR response or the FTC / AG complaints.
Posted by Christine on 10/14/2009 at 04:45 PM
2008 - 2009 FCRA - FDCPA violations • LHR refusal to validate • (0) Comments • Permalink
