There are many members of this board who know a lot more about this process than I do, so my answer will have to be kind of provisional, but:
1) Yes, I think it's worth it to send a debt verification letter if you're within 30 days of having received your debt valiation letter from MCM, given the very low commitment of time and resources on your part to do so.
2) A debt verification letter is not the magic, delete-your-debt bullet that YouTube and other places might lead one to believe, so you'll want to have reasonable expectations about what the result of sending one will be.
From what I understand, the bar for what the collector has to provide in response to a verification letter isn't particularly high. I know there are a lot of letter templates online with a list of documents the letter states the debt collector has to provide, but debt collectors are under no obligation to abide by any of those lists. If you sent your debt verificaton letter within the 30 days, then the collection agency has to stop collection efforts while they investigate, but I think the law is pretty vague about what specifically they have to send back to you as proof. If you don't accept what they send as proof and think what they have might not stand up in court, then you'd probably be looking at hiring a debt attourney to take it any further.
@biz2017 wrote:I really appreciate your quick response. Me knowing that the debt is actually valid, what is the purpose of sending a debt validation letter? I have researched this and the general consesus is that everyone should send a validation letter but I cannot figure out why if I do know that I did in fact have that debt, and I do know that MCM is a legitimate company that collects these debts. The general consensus online seems to be: "they may not have the information and can dismiss everything." But that sounds crazy to me especially for a $20,000 debt.
The reason to send it is that debt collectors don't always have great records for the debts they buy, so it is possible to get lucky and have a debt collector not actually have adequate record of the debt, even by the low bar they have to clear. For a legitimate debt, I'd expect that they do, but, since the only cost to you in sending the letter is to write, print, and mail it, I'd say the small chance of clearing $20,000 still makes it worth it to send one.
@biz2017 wrote:
@Slabenstein wrote:
@biz2017 wrote:I really appreciate your quick response. Me knowing that the debt is actually valid, what is the purpose of sending a debt validation letter? I have researched this and the general consesus is that everyone should send a validation letter but I cannot figure out why if I do know that I did in fact have that debt, and I do know that MCM is a legitimate company that collects these debts. The general consensus online seems to be: "they may not have the information and can dismiss everything." But that sounds crazy to me especially for a $20,000 debt.
The reason to send it is that debt collectors don't always have great records for the debts they buy, so it is possible to get lucky and have a debt collector not actually have adequate record of the debt, even by the low bar they have to clear. For a legitimate debt, I'd expect that they do, but, since the only cost to you in sending the letter is to write, print, and mail it, I'd say the small chance of clearing $20,000 still makes it worth it to send one.
I guess that's true the the small cost to send this can be worth it. I guess I'm just worried I might anger them and they will retract the offer they gave me.
Again, I know a lot less about this than many other board members, but I wouldn't worry about it. They probably get thousands of these letters every day; it's just part of the business that they're in. It's your right under the law to reqest verification within those first 30 days, regardless.
