BackFromTheDebt

They probably won’t. Realize there are no guarantees.

They could file again. They might file again. They more likely than not won’t. But you can’t be sure until the SOL has passed.

You need to dispute it in some way to fight the law suit. A lawsuit is almost always too late to file a DV letter, but the dispute could be in the form of a denial, At this point, you have several options. 1. Work out a settlement between now and when the answer is due. If you have enough money, and you don't want to spend the time to fight this, a settlement might be the best answer. 2. If you are completely destitute, disabled, etc. -- in other words, a real hardship case -- I think Midland has a hardship program some people have used. If you can show a real hardship, they have been known to just drop the lawsuit. 3. You can fight this, and probably win. Look up the arbitration section, and look at some of @fisthardcheese's posts on arbitration. There are many people who have used arbitration to completely beat Midland/Sychronicity lawsuits.

The best thing you can do to boost your credit score is to wait until the derogatory remarks are off in a couple of years, and make sure you pay your bills on time between now and then. Any accounts you have open, keep open. Length of your credit history matters. When your credit score gradually improves, ask for higher limits on your cards, so your usage won’t be too high. When your credit is much better, apply for higher limit cards. Make only a few payments on each card every month and pay the amount in full. I was able to slowly get my credit score from the mid 400s to the mid-high 700s over time.

1. Do you have any records of the payments you made before the loan was sold? This is important. For example, I used to have a mortgage with BMO Harris, and at one point they claimed I hadn't made a payment. Fortunately, I had made that payment at the bank, and saved the receipt. My current bank says the canceled check is the receipt. So, if you go to the bank for which you have a checking account, and you can prove they made a mistake, send them the evidence right away. 2. I feel bad for you not being able to get anyone on the phone. I would suggest sending everything by mail. Make copies, and send everything CMRRR. 3. Strongly consider contacting the CFPB and banking regulators. You also may wind up having to retain an attorney. There is a former poster from this forum who wound up fighting a foreclosure by showing wrongdoing by the bank. As in, the bank pretty much wound up walking away from the mortgage. I am currently contracting for a different bank. I know from experience that banks do NOT want to be on the bad side of federal regulators. I cannot give details, but when regulators get involved, the banks pretty much HAVE to make things right, no matter what the cost is to the bank. As is, I've seen banks eat millions or even over 100 million to fix issues which effect multiple parties.

Sometimes they list the rates; sometimes not.

To the OP: This is a Sychronicty account. The JDB bought all the rights and obligations of the original debt and the original contract. You retain all your rights and obligations. One of your rights is the right to arbitration. Synchronicity has an arbitration agreement which is fantastic to you. Meaning, if you get them into arbitration you will almost certainly win, because almost no JDB wants to spend zillions of dollars to collect the debt. They go for the low hanging fruit. Do a search on this site for arbitration, especially for Sychronicity accounts.

I should add — there is at least a small probability that the OC declared the OP dead as a truly perverse form of skip tracing. As in, prove you are alive by giving us all the contact information, so we can sic our collectors on you. Doing so would be illegal. If this actually happened, or if the OC could not show any valid reason why they declared the OP dead, the bank could get into trouble, and may very well be willing to walk away to get the OP to drop any claims against the bank. If I were the OP, I would demand the bank show good reason why they declared him deceased.

Braking the law in order to find a debtor who seems to have flown the coop. At one point, I had to change my phone number because the phone system was attached to a water tower that burned down. To get a new phone ASAP I needed a new number. Almost all the debt collectors were smart enough to call 411 to get my new number. One OC was not. As a ruse, they sent a letter to my wife saying her account was suspended because of a high volume of unusual and large charges. She had only used the account once, for a balance transfer. The letter was designed to shock her into contacting the OC and asking about the charges. That was illegal under state and federal laws. What we did: She sent a letter CMRRR demanding an explanation, disputing the entire debt, and demanding an investigation of all charges. The letter included what federal statutes required them to investigate. Instead of answering my wife’s letter, the OC sent the account to a CA. Over the next few years, my wife sent letters to each CA refusing to pay the debt until an investigation came through. Eventually it went to a law firm. At that point my wife filed a claim in JAMS for fraud, identity theft, etc. I was able to represent her in JAMS. Their lawyer was not happy with his client after discovery. I cannot tell what the settlement was.

Which is why I mentioned passwords. I need to give a password for my accounts when dealing with banks, etc. to show I am authorized to get certain information. But, that is not sufficient to prove that I am who I say I am. There are many scams which prey upon grandparents, for example, in which the caller pretends to be the grandchild calling from jail. The scam artists are quite good. I know of a case in which one of the most brilliant attorneys in Long Island was scammed. Back when I was a professor, one time I was talking to a student who called from home, two counties away. He asked for his grades. My interpretation of federal privacy laws were I could not give him the information, because authorization had to either be in person or in writing. Fortunately I made the students come up with passwords at the beginning of the semester. Legally, I could give out the grades corresponding to they password.

Both my wife and I work and have worked in several fields which have VERY strict federal privacy laws, and both of us have been trained on how to deal with federal privacy laws. I am currently in banking, and I have been trained in personal confidential information handling. Phone calls are NOT a good way to deal with private information. I can get on the phone and say "I am Groot". That does not make me Groot. Private information is best handled either (a) by mail or (b) using a password. By mail is best. True, debt collectors generally do not follow strict privacy practices. A random CA can call me up and ask for Groot, and when I say "I am Groot", they wind up giving out all sorts of confidential information. Heck, many years ago I had a debt collector from Citibank scream at me because I said I was NOT Groot, and I didn't know how he could find Groot. He accused me of lying. I have always advised people not to deal with debt collectors over the phone, since we laymen can easily say something stupid. Any bank that would call someone up, and use a statement that the recipient is Groot as proof that the recipient really is Groot, is asking for trouble with federal regulators. Unfortunately, I don't have any idea what the laws are regarding a bank declaring you dead. My advice for the OP to save and document everything, which the OP is wisely following, is the best I can do. If I were the OP, I would spend the time to look into what the bank is or is not required to do in order to declare one of their customers to be deceased. Maybe the bank followed the law to the letter, maybe they did not. I can say, based upon my short experience in the banking industry, that I know of cases in which banks have simply written off part or even all of a debt in order to steer clear of federal regulators. I was personally involved in a project in which staggering amounts of money were written off.

When things get weird, anything can happen. Which is why I recommended earlier that EVERYTHING be well documented and saved. This could be a mess up by the OC. This may or may not be an honest mistake. They could verify. This could be ID theft. This could be one illegal skip tracing. As I have mentioned many times in the past, I got one of the most dogged OCs to drop a case with illegal skip tracing they refused to investigate. We don’t know what is going on. The OC may handle this correctly, and there may be no violation. Or, the OC could mess this up and the OP saving all the evidence could blow this up in the OC’s faces. When an OC did some illegal skip tracing on my wife’s account, we got the OC to walk away and also got a law firm to pay a couple of dimes for their violations. So don’t assume this is just an innocent thing for which you have no recourse. Even if it is innocent, they may well be willing to make an extremely favorable settlement to avoid having to explain to a judge or arbitrator why they presumed you dead without any evidence.

Yes, OCs can be abusive when they call. That is one of the many reasons why I used a call blocker back in the day. (This was so long ago, it was a land line). Revocation of right to call works better with cell phones than with land lines. AND, it works better if it is a robo-call and you can prove it is a robo-call. Otherwise, if you don't want to speak to the OC, block their calls. I did once have an OC that committed all sorts of nasty offenses on my wife's account when we changed our phone numbers. In that situation, they did some illegal skip tracing, claiming there were a lot of unusual charges on her account. When she demanded to know what the charges were, and demanded an investigation, they ignored her. That really came back to bite them in the posterior when they finally threatened to sue her. Of course your situation is different. They may or may not handle this one properly. The best advice I can give you is: 1. SAVE EVERYTHING! 2. Make copies of everything you send out, and save the copies. 3. Send all letters CMRRR. Save the green card. 4. Save all correspondence from the OC and any collection agencies. 5. SAVE EVERYTHING!!!!! I hope I am not being too subtle in emphasizing how you need to save everything. At some point, if the OC does commit a violation, you need all the evidence to nail them. In my wife's case, saving everything was worth the equivalent of a few months' salary.

The short answer is, your credit score will increase. I can't tell you exactly how much it will increase. I think Credit Karma has a tool you can use to see what changing certain things would have on your estimated FICO score. Please note: this is NOT your real FICO score. It is an estimated score, and the effects the tool shows are rough estimates. Better than what any of us could predict, based on our extremely limited knowledge of your situation, and not knowing the FICO algorithms.

There were some extenuating circumstances, Extenuating circumstances play a huge role. Every OC is different, and there can be huge differences from case to case. Back about a decade or so ago, I was able to get a 25% settlement just before charge-off with FNBO. That was normal in those days. Sometimes the state laws can make a difference as well. Back in those days, BOA (now BAML) kept very bad records, and settlements of 10-15% were quite common. My state had very strict records requirements, so I was able to use that to keep BOA from ever suing, and also to beat Cap 1. Still, this is one of the best settlements we have seen from Discover. Other good settlements have generally been between the time Discover was billed for the hearing, and when they paid the bill. I don't recall seeing this good a settlement this early.