Category: Debt Settlement

I previously posted about the BIZARRE Dell refusal to settle an old charged off account:

Suing Dell Financial Services because it REFUSED to settle an old chargeoff

Dell actually hired an outside attorney and he scheduled a contested trial.   The attorney refused to communicate with me when I asked him whether my posting was accurate, but he finally responded to my client’s email and Dell then offered to delete the balance and my client accepted.

It cost my client $80 to sue and serve Dell and he had paid me $300 to settle the account, so I think it worked out ok.  I have NO idea why Dell wasted the money to hire a local attorney, but not communicating with customers seems to be an important part of Dell’s procedures.

This was SLOW going and the dismissal was just filed last week, a few days before the trial.  We had asked the attorney to have DFS change the payment history, but the settlement agreement states that Dell is not responsible for Fair Isaac’s FICTITIOUS late payments. Of course we know that, but why couldn’t Dell be nice about it and change the payment history?

As of today, the Equifax credit report still shows the balance and my client has to dispute with the credit bureaus.  And we’ll get a new myFICO report to see whether the fictitious lates are still an issue.

I’ve been settling accounts for clients since the early 90s, but I never had a creditor refuse to settle an account.  On 3/13/13 I first contacted Dell Financial Services (on credit reports as WebBank and/or DFS) and I was advised that Resurgent Capital Services has the account.  Resurgent then stated that it had returned the account to DFS on 4/20/10.

I immediately faxed the power of attorney to Dell.  A week later it was still not yet in its system. I faxed to a new fax # and when DFS finally had the power of attorney so they could discuss settlement, DFS again insisted that Resurgent has the account.  It didn’t matter how many times I explained that Resurgent stated that it had returned the account to Dell in 2010, they kept giving me the number for Resurgent and even worse, often transferred me directly claiming that I was being transferred to the department that would handle the settlement.

Last Friday I was on the phone with DFS for a long time and I finally got a fax number that allegedly goes to the DFS legal department.  The first part of the fax is posted below.   I also attached the fax I had previously sent to Dell credit reporting in India regarding the fictitious late payments (a documented FICO scoring bug) and I will explain details in my next post.  While Dell credit reporting claimed that they updated the credit reporting last week, today’s Equifax report shows NO changes.

Another issue with DFS was that they initially claimed that the account could not be settled because it was in bankruptcy and that it would take a week to clear that up.  My client’s bk had been dismissed, as DFS reported to the credit bureaus for years, along with the balance.

Yesterday I attempted to verify that the DFS legal department received my fax, but DFS refused to provide a phone number for its legal department.  To add insult to injury, they even transferred me to Resurgent again and gave me their phone number to confirm receipt of my fax sent to the DFS legal department.  Of course Resurgent again told me that they sent the account back to Dell on 4/20/10.

When I requested that the DFS Indian billing department manager transfer me to someone in the US, I got to speak with Marcia.  She confirmed that there is no phone number for the legal department (they’d probably get thousands of calls from upset customers every day).  Marcia said that she would try to confirm receipt of my fax and that the person she had to contact was away from his desk.  I was supposed to get a call back from Marcia within an hour — several hours ago.  I got NO call.

So we have no choice but to quickly file a small claims suit AND start contacting attorneys.

I already emailed the TX SOS for the registered agent info as the DFS headquarters are in Austin.  I’ll post the small claims complaint once we get the info.  If Dell doesn’t immediately delete the account from the credit reports and reimburse my fee we can have an attorney take over.  If my client’s lease option expires because of DFS we’re talking major damages, far beyond small claims.

We are also going to send a published complaint to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

FYI, my client paid $300 for the Credit Activist settlement.  On average it takes about 6 hours to settle an account, including the followup to ensure that it is reported correctly or deleted. I already spent at least 12 hours on Dell, but if my clients cannot recover my fees from the creditors / collectors engaging in illegal activities, there is no extra charge for the sometimes over 50 hours required to get results.

Occasionally I start an entire new blog with regulatory complaints as for Asset Acceptance.  However, since my Dell client’s lease option is expiring, we don’t have the time to go through the regulatory complaint process and have to file suit right away.  The primary purpose of the CFPB complaint is to create public awareness and to hopefully have the CFPB order Dell to clean up its act.  Indian support for financial services ought to be ILLEGAL!

For the record, I have nothing at all against Indian people, have Indian friends and clients and I wish I could visit India for a few months.  However, our financial and personal records ought to be in the United States. 

So I’ll post the small claims complaint as soon as we have it ready and below is the fax I sent to the DFS legal department on Friday: (more…)