IC Systems tells me to dispute item they admit they don't own. Legal?

[travisp33]

I have a collection from IC Systems reporting on my Equifax. Sent DV letter CCCRR in june, no reply.

Decide to call them today. Lady is rude and says "You asked us not to talk to you. Are you tellinig me you want to talk about this now?". I agree, she says the debt was pulled in 2011 and they requested deletion from the CRAs. She then advises me to dispute with the CRA.

Are they breaking the law here? They recieved written notice from me informing them they are reporting a debt, and now they claim they don't own it and haven't since before my letter. Are they not required to report accurately? Lawsuit?

This reminds me of one of my favorite situations at work. You tell the network guy the internet is down. He asks you to put in a ticket. You tell him "We both have the same amount of knowledge now, the internet is down and its your job. You put in the ticket. Besides, I cant put in a ticket because your ticketing system is on the internet."

[AndySoCal]

With collection agencies the account can be assigned to them by the original creditor or the collection agency can buy the debt from the original creditor. Form your post it sounds like it was assigned to IC Systems. The term pulled is what makes me think it was assigned. If was assigned the original creditor still owns the debt. If you have the $$$ I would talk to the original creditro and see if you can pay the debt off before it is assigned to another collection agency. I would dispute the trade line per there request while the trade line it is a good route to go in this case.

[RobertEG]

First, they should not have spoken with you,even with your oral authorization.

If your DV was timely, they are under a statutory bar against conducting any collection activities.  Oral OK does not terminate that provision of statute.

Be that as it may, they are saying that the OC terminated their collection authorization.

Since they no longer have collection authoriity, I doubt they will ever respond to your DV, as they cannot conduct collection regardless of whether they provide debt verification.  There is no requireent that a debt collector respond to a DV.

As for disputing, the fact that the OC may have requsted them to delete their reporting is not binding upon them.  It is a request.

The debt collector was apparently only an assigned collection agent, and never owned the debt.

There is no statutory requirement that a debt collector must delete their prior reporting based on termination of that authority.

No violation of statute = no basis for legal action.

However, the CRA has a policy statement in their reporting manual that debt collectors should delete their reporting if their authority is terminated.

You could thus dispute on that basis, but there is no statutory requirement that they delete.