Jefferson Capital Response to DV - How should I proceed?

[Anonymous]

So I sent a BBB complaint to Jefferson Capital requesting supporting documentation about the debt. They sent me a letter in the mail. This is the contents:

Dear Mr. Corncobbob, 

We are in receipt of your correspondence sent  on your behalf from the Better Business Bureau concerning the above referenced account.

This information is not legal advice. The law limites how long you can be sued on a debt. Because of the age of this debt, we (Jefferson Capital Systems, LLC) cannot sue you for it. In many cirumstances, you can renew the debt and start the time period for filing of a law suit against you if you take specific action such as making a written promise to pay.  You should determine the effect of any actions you take with respect to this debt. If you do not pay the debt, we may report or continue to report it to the credit reporting agencies as unpaid for as long as the law permits this report.

Jefferon Capital Systems, LLC acquired the Verizon Wireless account with a blance of $2,061.22. Pursuant your request for validation of this debt, enclosed are copies of the final size Verizon Wireless billing statements. Please note, the address and the telephone number Verizon Wireless provided service for match the address and telephone number on your complaint.  We are willing to accept $1,030.00 as full and final satisfaction of this debt, provided payment is received on or before June 20, 2019.  If you wish to take advantage of this offer, you may mail your payment to Jefferson Capital Systems, LLC, PO Box 772813, Chicago, IL 60677-2813.  Please indicate your Jefferson Capital Systems, LLC reference number (3450528645) on your payment instrument.  We are notifying the credit bureaus of your dispute.

NOTICE: Unless you notify this office within 30 days after receiving this notice that you dispute the validity of this debt or any portion thereof, this office will assume this debit is valid.  If you notify this office in writing within 30 days after receiving this notice that you dispute the validity of this debt or any portion of it, this office will obtain verification of the debt or obtain a copy of a judgement and mail you a copy of such judgement or verification.  If you request of this office in writing within 30 days after receiving this notice, this office will provide you with the name and address of This communication is from a debt collector is an attempt to collect a debt.

Thank you for the opportunity to be of service.

Sincerely

Contact info

The last line of the letter seems to be a typo. I don't know what she was trying to say. The also included the past 6 bills from Verizon there, but that's all. Any idea how I should respond to these people? I hear they are pretty good about just removing stuff. So I wanna try my best to not pay anything if possible.

[Anonymous]

I just checked on the CFPB website and they say  that they have to provide this in their letter:

Answer:

A debt collector must tell you the name of the creditor, the amount owed, and that you can dispute the debt or seek verification of the debt.

Any debt collector who contacts you claiming you owe on a debt is required by law to tell you certain information about the debt. That information includes:

• The name of the creditor
• The amount owed
• That you can dispute the debt
• That if you don’t dispute the debt within 30 days the debt collector will assume the debt is valid
• That if you dispute the debt in writing within 30 days the debt collector will provide verification of the debt
• That if you request the name and address of the original creditor within 30 days, if different from the current creditor, the debt collector will provide you that information. 

If the debt collector doesn’t provide the above information in the initial contact with you, the debt collector is required to send you a written notice including that information within five days of the initial contact.

That last bullet point stand out, because it looks like they typoed that last bullet point on the end. I don't know if that will do anything for me. It's been 5 days since I received this letter.

[RobertEG]

You appear to have a bit of a legal mess as far as the normal DV process.

You dont send a DV request to the BBB, you send it directly to the debt collector.

Additionally, a DV request sent prior to dunning notice imposes no restriction on the debt collector, and can be ignored.

Their "response" to the BBB complaint is both the sending of a dunning notice (aside from the noted typo ommission) AND sending of all of the required components of debt validation, including the current owner, the name of the original creditor, the amount of the debt, and advisement of DV rights.

While they apparently did not properly include advisement of right to request name of the original creditor due to an apparent typo in the dunning notice, they provided the name, and thus for all intents and purposes, I would not consider there to have been any violation of dunning notice requirements.

In my opinion, they have both complied with dunning notice requirement and provided adequate debt validation.

The DV process does not require that they include documentation to support their verification, so they have included more than what is required under the statute.

IN conclusion, if you wish to pursue assertion that their letter does not comply with the dunning notice requirements of FDCPA 809, teh result will not compel any deletion of the reported collection.  At best, it will result in your abiity to collection $1,000 for a violation.

That confrontational approach may kill any future good-will that you might seek from the debt collector, as a pay for deletion offer is the usual path for attempting deletion of reported collections.