fradulant verizon bill
Complaint
gina simmons
Country: United States
I have just received a collection notice from Afni Inc that states I owe $246.85 to verizon. This account is said to be from 1999. I don't owe verizon anything.When asked why if I owed this then why haven't I heard anything until now. The Afni employee said that gte was taken over by verizon, and that the files had not been audited in the last 5-10 years. This Afni company has now bought these files, but have no notes on any bills that have or have not been paid. I could not beleive that people could get away with this scam. I have filed a better buisness report, and have found out the statue of limitations law in my state. It was very helpful, and I now know my rights under the laws to proctect people from monsters like Afni. I have had a verizon account for the last past 5 years,and have never had any problems. It's unfortunate that a company like Afni is smearing the Verizon name.
Comments
Send this letter immediately, so that it is sent within 30 days of receiving their first letter, to invoke the FDCPA prohibition against continued collection until they send proof.
Once you have verified they have received your letter, check your credit reports to see if they have posted any negative information. If they have, send disputes, mailed certified, to the credit reporting agencies.
The above "phony recorded conversation" gambit is commonly used by fraudulent telemarketers, notably magazine subscription scams and business directory scams.
But then, the fact that your name isn't clear even when all your debts are payed is a bit screwy as well.
You get to deal not only with your own debts, but with any alleged debt some debt collector wants to claim you owe. I'm not even talking about id theft, since some debt collectors just send bills to anyone with a similar name they can find, even trashing their crdit reports, with little care to find the right person.
They can trash your credit reports with impunity, they don't have to prove anything even when you catch them, and after you catch them, they get a chance to just remove the damage and walk away at no cost. With an opportunity like that, it's easy to cross over from "debt collection" to outright scam, and the industry is attracting people willing to do just that.
In fact, debt collection is attracting increasing interest from criminals, as evidenced by the recent escapades of several Buffalo debt collectors rounded up by the New York Attorney General, and the Indian/middle-eastern accented "debt collectors" now using credit data to prey on Americans, conning them into paying non-existent "debts" using phoned threats of arrest.
Sad thing is there isn't that much difference between the behavior of supposedly legitimate debt collectors, and the con artists who immitate them. They both lie and deceive, they both cheat, they both threaten and break the law.
I have called them, returned mail to them and told them that the person they are trying to reach does not live at our address. Of course I get the "We will remove this address from our data base" but their junk mail continues to come to my house.
I am going to start forwarding all the mail for this person to their office listed above. Maybe then they will learn.
Thank you.
File a complaint with the Illinois Attorney General. You may want to have the paper trail of such a written regulatory complaint in case they change the name on the account to yours, based only on matching their erroneous address information to skip-trace information that shows you live there.
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/entertainment/bmg.htm
The WV AG has a strong record of going after debt collectors crossing into WV to violate debt collection laws. He may not like companies that just wait a couple years after a settlement to ignore it and try again.
When it's that cheap, you don't give a damn who you bill, and they often don't allow access to validation.
"it is still a debt and you still must pay. Many companies are bought and sold as well so a debt from Verizon could be from some other company you owed that they aquired, doesn't mean you don't owe them. "
BS. Doesn't mean you do owe it either. Many of these cheap "debts" are bogus, the result of account billing errors that the original creditors failed to scrub from their sold data, or so old they originated in corrupted records from merged companies.
Many reports indicate Verizon has sold such unowed accounts to you, including both corrected billing errors and already reported fraud accounts. Others are your own skip-trace errors. You ignore all that, in violation of law, and try to con people with excuses into paying without disputing unowed alleged debts, also in violation of law.
"There are many laws, rules, and regulations that these companies follow, and they would not be growing and expanding to such extents as they are if they were truly breaking them."
Actually, they may be growing because they are breaking them. Complaints against debt collectors have been growing at more than 15% for several years, and FTC has been conducting a series of hearings to investigate problems with the collection industry, particularly the junk debt part of it.
As for your legal compliance, see Seeger v. AFNI, where you added unauthorized fees, or Hale v. AFNI, where you were found to have routinely sent out deceptive letters designed to convince people disputing debts with you that the burden of proof was on them, not you, in violation of FDCPA.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=4 ... t=2002&as_vis=1
"...
CONCLUSION
The Court finds that AFNI's statements in its form letter are "false, misleading, or deceptive" in violation of 15 U.S.C. § 1692e, and AFNI is not entitled to assert the bona fide error defense under 15 U.S.C. § 1692k(c). Accordingly, Plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment on the issue of liability under § 1692e of the FDCPA is GRANTED and Defendant's motion for summary judgment is DENIED.
..."
Or your recent problems with the Minnesota Attorney General, who sued you in 2008 for violations caused by dunning Minnesota residents for unowed Verizon bills, then failing to validate.
After reaching a settlement, you got caught again, doing the same thing with qwestionable Qwest "accounts".
http://www.startribune.com/local/92589329.html?page=1&c=y
"...
In 2008, Swanson sued Afni after consumers complained the company had harassed them and improperly reported debts to credit bureaus. Afni settled the case by agreeing to stop collection efforts once the company determined it had the wrong person.
Afni's recent efforts to collect on the Qwest debts have unleashed a "significant number" of new complaints, according to the attorney general's office. Swanson sent letters last month to Qwest and Afni asking that they stop collection efforts on the Minnesota accounts until the companies straighten out their records.
"There's clearly a breakdown in the accuracy of the data these companies are operating off of," said Ben Wogsland, spokesman for the attorney general's office. "These kind of collection practices are troubling. It's extremely frustrating to consumers who don't even owe the debt to get hounded."
..."
Yeah, there's a "breakdown". You know when you aren't sure where to send a bill, but why use any care to avoid damaging innocent parties, when the law lets you get away with it until you are caught. Find some name, anywhere, even if it isn't very close, and send them a bill. Computers do that real cheaply. You just make up who you say owes this supposedly owed "debt".
And while you are at it, might as well trash their credit. Real responsible.
Once I mail them the packet (including letters to previous collectors)I do not hear from them again but a new one appears in about 6 months.
I wish there was an answer short of hiring an attorney to deal with $273.09
Contact an attorney with experience in FDCPA and FCRA litigation. Both allow courts to award both damages and attorney fees if you win.
Patterns of complaints against AFNI indicate that they may be deceptively altering name information in dunning letters from the original telecom billing information names to match whatever names they find through "skip-tracing".
They appear to be cheaply computer matching account information against databases, and sending bills out to any similar name, or even past or future occupants at addresses tied to some old account. There are also reports of billing people for alleged accounts tied to current phone numbers that are in good standing, indicating that they may even be "identifying" their targets by claiming the current phone number owner owes some bill from a prior owner of that number.
There are also reports that they have gotten allegedly "delinquent" accounts from, say, Verizon, that Verizon has verified to consumers as paid with no balance owed, yet have refused even during conference calls with Verizon customer service employees to admit that the clearly erroneous collection account is in error.
The above practices are deceptive, as they misrepresent the actual original account information (and thus the "status of the debt", in FDCPA terms) and might lead consumers to believe the account was actually in their name and owed by them. Combined with widely reported use of deceptive validation letters and talk-offs by AFNI employees, apparently to divert consumer attempts at validation, such practices are likely to result in losses by consumers due to fraud.
About a year ago, one of their routine validation response letters was found to be deceptive by a federal judge in a 3 state class action lawsuit. In addition, the Minnesota Attorney General sued them in 2008, and despite reaching a settlement, is again investigating complaints of erroneous billing of Minnesota residents, over alleged Qwest accounts.
If you are really finally tired of them, then get an attorney, so they stop getting a free ride. FDCPA and FCRA allow courts to award damages AND attorney fees, so find an attorney willing to take such cases on contingency. You might try www.naca.net
My son had a phone with them , they are trying to collect the balance form me, he is 30 years old!!!
If your son had a Verizon account in his name, but now AFNI is sending you bills in your name which is different from his name, that would be consistent with skip-tracing your son's address to others with that address and trying to bill them.
They have been caught making these "mistakes" many times.
Check your credit reports, as they routinely post damaging information even for "accounts" as bogus as this.
If you pay them for some "debt" you never owed, you will get stuck with credit damage, possibly for the next 7 years. You can sue them violating FDCPA (deceptive collection), and for damaging your credit. Both FDCPA and FCRA allow courts to award damages and attorney fees, so there are attorneys who take such cases on contingency.
You might try www.naca.net to find an attorney in your state.
the Vitriolic Virago who runs that cesspool, came a-rattling like a tambourine supposedly answering
BBB which i registered a consumer complaint about what was going on...... They have never notified me
or provided any information in what they are doing. Here..... With this in hand they went and flagged
the credit files with IN COLLECTION they yet to send me a proof it is my debt and they are the owner
of the bill.......read and laugh people.... THIS is a Proof how accurate they are. Afni is a cesspool
obviously really big chunks rise to top!
June 27, 2011
Dispute Resolution
Case Manager/Business Practices
BBB Complaint Department
bbb@heart.net
RE: Mr.XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Afni, Inc. Account xxxxxxxxxxx; Verizon Account 4497149526873
This is in response to your letter to Afni, Inc., regarding the above referenced matter. We appreciate your assistance in bringing our consumer's concerns to our attention. In that regard, on or about March 2001, AT&T notified Afni the above referenced account remained due and owing from Mr. xxxxxxxxx This account was established on March 1, 2008 and was considered delinquent by the creditor on October 24, 2008. The service address for the account was his still-current address.
According to their logic ATT came to tell them in march 2001 that I will establish a service on
March 1, 2008 which they (the ATT) will consider delinquent on October 24, 2008
These kinds of morons give a bad name to morons..... will they get a penny? not during the
lifetime of that old bag!