Legal Question in Credit and Debt Law in New Jersey
Collections
I have two collection agencies after me: Omni Financial and Primary Financial LLC.
With Omni, they have not sent me information with circumstances leading to the total amount that I owe, besides letters with just the total cost. They have not put anything on my credit report either. I am trying to figure out why they have done neither (although I am not complaining with the latter). The one thing they did though was contact my commander.
With Primary Financial, they will not negotiate with me on a payment plan because I told them I was having financial trouble and will not tell me why I owe the total. They just wanted me to send them 10 postdated checks for 200 dollars each. They are also not on my report. I have tried talking with the representative and the manager to figure something out, but they were both very rude and passed me off to the representative I was assigned to.
I want to pay off the debts, but there is no written agreement and I cannot seem to negotiate with them. What can I do?
2 Answers from Attorneys
Re: Collections
You could hire an attorney. Sometimes, its the only way they will respond. This is a better option if you owe them a lot of money. If you only owe them $1000, it doesn't make sense to pay $500 or more to an attorney.
Getting them to pay attention to you varies based on your knowledge of the law and the attitude of the company.
Usually, CA's will start off as non-reporting and use the option to report a negative mark on your credit report as leverage to get you to pay them.
I suggest dealing with them in writing. Anything you say to them over the phone can and will be used against you in court. They record everything.
Re: Collections
You might enjoy looking at budhibbs.com. He has a lot to say about Omni.
Whether you hire a lawyer to help you with this or not, your instinct not to send them post dated checks is correct. Once they have your routing number and your account number and know where you bank, they can, theoretically, take everything in your account.
They cannot sue you because they are not lawyers. They cannot threaten that "the sheriff is coming out with an arrest warrant". You level the playing field by getting their name and mailing address and conducting negotiations in writing, rather than allowing them to harass you over the phone.
Hope this helps. Elizabeth Powell
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