
Michael of Indianapolis, IN on Nov. 25, 2009
The following is the text of the letter sent to Applied bank:
I am writing this letter to inform your company of the information that I am preparing for the Indiana Attorney Generals Office. In short, your collectors have been in serious violation of the Federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act of 1993 (hereafter FDCPA). By the way, I am an experienced collector and know this law inside and out.
I had a card with Applied Bank. My life partner had a heart attack and I had to pay medical bills for him and got behind. Not proud of it but it happened. My balance was then $350. After three months of being behind and due to excessive charges by the bank, it was in excess of $500. It was then that I received the Banks letters coded R31 and R51. In those letters, it stated that if I made three reaging payments in a row, which I made arrangements and did, that my account would be brought current and the delinquency would be removed from my credit. My experience at Chase and Alliance Data taught me the value of such programs and I was glad for the chance.
Imagine my dismay when I made the payments on time and was then presented with an even higher bill than I started out with due to further bank charges. In addition, when I checked my credit report, I was shocked to see that my credit reports had not been properly updated and still showed me as being delinquent on all three bureaus. In other words, Applied Bank made no effort to follow through.
Having worked in the industry for years, I called to try to get it straightened out and your operator, in India, refused to help. The quote was So what, we got your money. That is all we care about. They refused to give me to a supervisor or to give me a stateside contact. I tried to call in five times. After that, to be honest, I determined that I would pay whomever Applied Bank sold the account to for collections but not one more penny would go to Applied Bank and your Indian operations. After all, we had medical bills.
Since that time, I have been subjected to nothing less than electronic harassment from your Indian collection staff:
1. They have called before and after legal calling hours on numerous occasions (an FDCPA violation).
2. I have received upwards of 40 phone calls a day including yesterday November 18 (an FDCPA violation).
3. Yesterday, when it got so bad that I actually answered the phone and told the gentleman to stop calling (his name was Ibrahim by the way) he switched my phone through the entire switchboard and I received 13 messages in the space of 1 minute while still on the phone with him (another FDCPA violation).
4. They have refused to give their name when calling.Your staff can usually, but not always, speak English well but they are still clearly in India.
5. When I told them that I was going to contact the Indiana Attorney General, I was told Your Attorney cant do anything to us.
6. I have asked for a stateside contact on numerous occasions and have always been refused (an FDCPA violation).
7. Three times now, they have claimed to be lawyers and needed to switch me to a senior lawyer who turned out to be a collections supervisor (an FDCPA violation).
8. Last week, they claimed to be calling from my Congressmans office in Washington, D.C., and would turn me in for federal charges unless I paid. If they want to try that again on someone else, they really should block the number. When I told the gentleman that I knew he was in India, he started swearing at me in Telegu (one advantage to working with a lot of Indian nationals).
9. When they kept calling one after the other when I was in a meeting at work, I left the room to answer and told them I was in a meeting and could not talk at that time and ended the call. They started calling back again and again and called more than 40 times in a row within ten minutes while I was in the meeting. As I have to leave the phone on for business purposes, my boss actually told me that if it happened again that I was in danger of losing my job (an FDCPA violation and legally actionable).
10. Your collectors have placed my cell number in all three calling fields (home, work, cell) on my record so that they can try to say they havent called more than the allowed four times per day for any one number (a common but illegal practice).
11. They have created a false account for Mirabelle (?) and placed all of my numbers in that records fields as well so that the additional calls did not show up on my record and only stopped when I called them on the practice (an FDCPA violation).
12. In addition, they have used numerous caller ID blocked phone numbers to try to escape tracking for illegal calls but screwed up as one of their numbers comes through because they forgot to program the final digit into the blocking software. I have confirmed this by answering each of these numbers at one time or another (an FDCPA violation).
13. I actually demonstrated to several coworkers what happens when I tell your collectors that I cannot talk and end the call. 22 return calls and thirteen voice messages in 5 minutes later, I was told that I should consult an attorney.
14. I am fully aware of the class action lawsuits against your company that have recently been settled in West Virginia and Pennsylvania.
Is it any wonder that I have determined to not pay this bill? As a matter of fact, I am considering not just turning this over to the Indiana Attorney Generals Office but also the Federal Trade Commission.
I look forward to hearing from your company as to how you will correct this situation. If I do not talk to a stateside contact in the next 30 days, I will forward the necessary forms to the Indiana Attorney Generals office. I will also contact one of the lawyers in the class action lawsuits.