Newbie in need of help concerning 23 year old debt

[sh9730]

Happy,

I sure wish the FTC or the courts would rule on the exact case of CAs pulling hard and answer the questions:

They can or cannot EVER pull hard?

They can ONLY if they OWN the debt?

They can pull a hard or soft at their discretion as long as they have legal right to try and collect on the debt? (i.e. even if the debt is only ASSIGNED to them for collection).

I say this because I see you saying they cannot on many posts, but I just did a google search and get about a million hits (and rulings) that say they can!?  I have seen a ton of people say this has happened to them (including me recently), but have never seen anyone be successful in having them removed?

Sorry to hijack thread.....if someone wants to start a new one (again!!) on this topic...ok.

[Anonymous]

Sorry sh9730 - Just because they have done it in the past does not make it legal- 

Read the FCRA, read the FTC opinion letters, read the case law - Then we will be happy to have a educated discussion-

OP- Please come back

[haulingthescoreup]

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@Anonymous wrote:

What I really need help with is a debt that is 23 years old. It doesn't appear on any credit report, but a collection agency did a check of my credit. I found out about it by checking my free annual credit report. The agency is Midland and they did a check in July fo 2007.

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And they never filed a collection, right? There's nothing on your reports related to this, other than the inquiry?

If I'm reading this right, it looks like they're a junk debt buyer, and when they acquired this so-called "account," they took a (most-likely illegal) hard sniff at your reports to see if anything looked interesting, realized that there really wasn't anything they could get, and then they wandered away. You may or may not have stirred them up again, but I don't see that there is a single solitary thing that they can do to your report. Time for a FOAD letter? (as in F-Off and Die.) And I'm sure that there are other things that need to be sent as well, but that's certainly my idea of what needs to be sent.

As for the legality of hard inqs by CA's, I don't have time to read case law, even if I would understand it , but I can maybe see the first collection agency, who got the account directly from the OC, having the right to pull a hard inq as part of trying to collect the debt. But for a junk-debt buyer who has acquired a dubious debt that's nearly a quarter-century old to have PP to access your, my or anybody's credit reports????? That had better not be legal! Otherwise, any of these companies could pretty much make up anything they liked and then take a casual stroll through all our credit histories!

Don't think so!