Need advice...MCM!

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone!

I need a little help sorting through what I should do. My situation is this: 

Back in 2002 my mother opened a credit card in my name from WAMU. In 2009 she defaulted on the account and it was sent to collections...in the amount of $2986. I agreed to pay the CA $50 a month until a settlement was reached or until it was paid off. I paid the CA for a couple of years totaling $1000, until they sold it to another company. I set up the same payment schedule with the 2nd CA and paid for a a little over a year, totaling $700. In April of last year, I finally decided to just negotiate a settlement and be done with it. In the middle of negotiations, they stopped responding to me. A month later, I checked my credit report and the debt was removed (not the WAMU, just the one from the CA)...that was May 2012. About 2 weeks ago, I began receiving calls from a 3rd CA- MCM, claiming to have bought the debt, a balance of $1286, from CA #2 in May 2012, but in the 8 months between May 2012 and Jan 2013, I was never notified about this. Why would it take 8 months for MCM to start contacting me regarding the debt? I explained to CA #3 that I was a little blindsided by this, considering I was negotiating with the previous CA and they stopped responding and stopped reporting to the credit bureaus. MCM offered me 40% off as long as I paid in 3 installments (not sure why it couldn’t be in one lump sum.) Anyway, I politely told them I wanted to investigate a little further before I agreed to anything. I guess they interpreted this as a “dispute” and have since stopped calling me. Today, I got a verification letter from MCM and a copy of an old WAMU bill. I have been in contact with CA #2 and can’t seem to get an answer as to why they sold the debt during negotiations and I’m not sure they have any legal obligation to me to have NOT done that. At this point, should I just negotiate a settlement with the MCM? I was in the process of negotiating a settlement with terms of a complete deletion and will certainly do the same for MCM.

Just looking for some advice. Also, suing my mother, or holding her responsible is not an option. Yes, it was wrong, but I just need to throw that out there

[Anonymous]

I should also mention that my credit score was 670 and as of 2 weeks ago when the new CA reported, it dropped to 608!!!

[LIGHTNIN]

dandb wrote: "negotiating a settlement with terms of a complete deletion"

Hi and Welcome to the forums,

That's what we call a PFD Letter. Some CA's will agree to them and other will not.

So here's a bump up, to let others chime in too.

[js0319]

If your goal is to have the collection deleted from your CR, offer a PFD with MCM. Even though you had a payment agreement set up with the previous CA's, they still had the right to sell the debt off if they chose to do so - and they did. See what you can do with MCM, and if they will not budge on a PFD you can pay them off and GW the heck out them.

[Bleety17]

What was your remaining balance? Have you tried to offer that amount as a settlement?

[Anonymous]

Thank you for your replies! My remaining balance is $1246. They actually offered me 40% off of that, but I told them I wanted to hold off until I figured out what happened with the previous CA and, of course, wanted them to validate the debt. I was in the middle of negotiating a settlement with terms of deletion from my credit reports when they up and sold my debt to Midland. I have read that Midland does not delete...or at least not easily...

[Anonymous]

Just a little update...

When I disputed the account with MCM, I also disputed the account with all 3 credit agencies. Today, I received confirmation that Experian has completed their investigation and the account has been DELETED from my credit report. I checked to make sure and sure enough it has and my score is back up to 670! I guess MCM didn't have sufficient evidence to support their claims that I still owed on this account? I haven't heard one peep from them in awhile...

[Anonymous]

Also, I guess I never made it clear that in the past, my lawyer handled this account. She told me that while working with the previous CA that she DID come to a settlement based on my payment history, but that they kind of fell off the map during the final phase. Perhaps they did finish the settlement and never sent us the paperwork? (That is what I ASSUMED happened considering they stopped reporting)