GW/PFD Letters

[RobertEG]

IMHO, I see potential benefits from sending out a GW/PFD letter to an OC  or CA, for if it is accepted by them, it erases the entire account history  Yeah!   

But…only after one gives up the ghost, in hope of salvation.

 

A GW/PFD letter is a combination of an offer to pay the account, in exchange for their agreement to delete their previous account reporting to the CRA’s.

 

Any creditor, or CA, is fully justified, upon receiving a GW/PFD letter, to simply tell the consumer that the FCRA mandates that are legally obligated to correctly report to the CRAs any prior derogs. And that is correct. .  That is beyond legal dispute.   So they have no obligation to delete any prior posts to a consumer file, and face charges of discrimination if they do it for one, and not for all.

 

A “pay for delete” (PFD) letter is primarily a plea to the wolves to excuse their prior, legitimate reporting, and to excuse it in view of a  consumer offer to the wolf of a carrot on the stick… and offer to pay them $$$. .    Some may bite the carrot, but many dont.

 

But what most consumers may not recognize it that a PFD letter, during the course of debt dispute, may (and most probably will) be interpreted by the creditor and courts  as an admission of the debt owed.  Think about it.  How you can one possibly offer any partial or full payment of a debt without an inherent admission that they owed  it?

 

SO, until one has fully accepted the debt obligation, and then wants to erase it, a GW or PFD offer should not be made.

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And any DOLA in the form or any offer to pay may also reset his or her state SOL, and thus lead to an extension of  the creditor’s right to sue for the debt.

 

\Consumers may look at GW and PFD letters as benign offers of negotiation, but creditors look at them as potential statutory grounds to reset the SOL for  suit and extension of collection of the debt to which they are legally entitled..

 

[Anonymous]

Robert,

I see merit in your points about GW requests - they are not worth the effort. 

I totaly disagree with your conclusion about creditors and courts finding PFDs an admission of debt. Some creditors might try, but it's an uphill road for them.

First, if i need a big loan this month, maybe a refinance, or a line of credit, or amortgage, and i have a fake baddie on my CRs, I don't have time to wait the 3 months that takes, end to end, to successfully dispute a TL.

Offering a creditor $1000 to make a the baddie go away and clean up my credit score, might be worth to me more than getting rid of it in a normal way.

I'm negotiating removal of information and nobody can claim that it's an admission of debt. After i succesfully settle and the TL is removed, (and i got my loan approved and the money is in the bank) I could actually sue the CA for incorrect reporting.

The SOL resets are also governed very strictly and even admission of the debt does not reset the clock. Unless the money exchanges hands without any contract in place (a verbal promise by the CA to accept payment in exchange of deletion is actually a binding contract), there is no necessarily SOL reset.

More so in court, where settlement discussions are not admissible as evidence - period - otherwise nobody would try to settle out of court for fear of retaliation, back off at the last minute and tell the judge the other side almost agreed to guilt.

Obviously, as the legislator has no interest in consumers, only courts have the last word on this.