Collection Agency Won't Respond to Settlement Letter

[Anonymous]

Hi all! I've been working on my credit and am happy to say I got most things taken care of. I sent a settlement offer to the last collection agency requesting a response within 30 days, you know, all of the usual hubub. It's been 50 days and I haven't heard a peep. What should I do in this instance? I have a year before I plan on applying for a mortgage, but obviously the faster I get this stuff taken care of the better it will be (refinancing auto loans and all of that good stuff).

I'm stuck on what my next move should be.

[Anonymous]

Send another letter is all you really can do. Unless you want to call and negotiate on the phone.

[Anonymous]

I'm in a similar situation.

I've got one collection on my reports from 2013 with The Bureaus (the bought a charged off Best Buy credit card account) and sent them a PFD offer back in January offering full payment. Got a reply from a collector who's apparently collecting on The Bureaus' behalf about a week later offering a settlment deal of 70% of the balance and marking the account as closed and settled. No response from The Bureaus, just the contracted collector.

I did not respond to that offer and thought it was bizarre that they wanted to accept less than the full amount when I offered the full balance.

Anyways, I sent The Bureaus another PFD letter in mid March, no response yet. I dropped off my third, and final, PFD letter in the mail last night. Not sure what I'll do if they don't respond to this one, either.

[Anonymous]

Keep in mind, a PFD is different than a settlement  negotiation.

In PFD, you're only offering to pay X amount if they agree to delete your record.

Many creditors refuse to do this, so they ignore the offer.  Remember that nobody is supposed to delete anything, some just do it anyway in exchange for payment.

Negotiating to settle a debt, when deletion is not even a part of the deal - they'll all do this.  Timelines may vary though, since many large collection agencies are just big paper-pushing companies and a letter may not get to the right desk in a given time limit.  Letters they send to you, ocmplete with "offer numbers" or assigned phone extensions, or other such designating information, are sent out as part of "campaigns" and responses to them are collected in a more organized fashion.

You can always start your negotiation on the phone - then ask them to send you a letter memorializing any agreement reached, before you pay it.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Send another letter is all you really can do. Unless you want to call and negotiate on the phone.

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I finally got a response back from a couple of CA on the third letter I sent. It was a no....

[RobertEG]

Do you have a pending request for debt validation that you previously sent to the debt collector?

If so, and if that DV request was timely, then you have imposed a cease collection bar on them, which would prevent any settlement negotiations with you until they have first sent the requested debt validation.