Old HELOC in collections, but I still receive bills from bank - How to resolve

[CaveGimp]

Quick summary, HELOC taken out with USAA in 2007.  2009 hit, pay cut, major surgery gone bad, tons of medical bills, house foreclosed on.  On Sept 14th, 2012 collections letter sent from ACI (debt collector).  I responded on Oct 8th with a DV letter certified/registered mail, received card back with signature, and no response from ACI.  During all of this I have been receiving statements from USAA to pay $599.07.  When I call them to ask what the statements are for the refer me to their collections department who tell me the account is in collections with ACI and to contact ACI.  But I continue to receive statements and requests from payment from USAA.  Today I am in a better position and I am trying to clean up my credit and have reached agreements with nearly all my creditors, except this one.  ACI won't talk to me because of the DV letter and they will only talk if I send another letter to stating I no longer dispute the claim.  USAA keeps sending me back to ACI, while they keep sending me bills. On my credit reports the original HELOC is noted s charged off.  There is no line for ACI on my credit report.  USAA who I also have checking, savings, and auto insurance with have "locked" my accounts until this HELOC is resolved.  My question is how do I proceed from here?  Since ACI never validated do I write a letter demanding they dismiss all actions and report back to USAA as resolved, or do I just wait and hope nothing hits my credit report from this?  Any suggestions?  Thanks

Cave Gimp

[llecs]

Sounds like USAA owns the account but used that CA to collect. I'd ignore the CA and only work with USAA. On the run-around, the CA legally cannot work with you due to the DV. They have an unlimited amount of time to respond. And USAA doesn't want to deal with you because they really don't have the in-house staff to collect on older debts so they assign everything. I used to deal with this in my repair days and actually used it as a legal tactic to get CAs to go away for good. I would call USAA back and explain to them that you are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Explain that legally the CA cannot communicate to your or collect due to the FDCPA. And on the otherhand you (USAA) don't want to work with me due to this assigned debt. I'd continue with something like I want to resolve this debt for good but have a CA who legally cannot work with me and a creditor who doesn't want to. Will you please work with me in resolving this? ....I always used that excuse and worked 100% of the time. YOu might get transferred around and might take a couple of calls but eventually you'll find a CSR who gets it.

[RobertEG]

The one problem I see in that approach is that simply sending payment in full to the debt collector is what is expected, and their receipt of payment is not a barred collection activity.  They may not come back with that answer, but I would if in their situation.......

[CaveGimp]

Thank you for the responses.  I appericate this help. 

[CaveGimp]

The saga continues.  I mailed a letter to USAA and CA (ACI) offering a settlement of 25% and pay for delete.  3 weeks after the letter I get a call, followed a few days later by a letter, to do a short sale on the HELOC.  They want 2 months of bank statements and 2 months of pay stubs plus a form filled out.  They also pulled my credit report after I sent the letter.  I'm not sure how a short sale would work since I lost the property in foreclosure in Jan of 2010.  I'm not going to go through the short sale process since this has been in collections for sometime now.  Any advice on how to proceed?  The CA still can't talk to me since I requested valadiation  and they never responded back.  At least at this point USAA is no longer hanging up on me.