If you have a standing complaint with a company's mishandling of your account and/or complaints with any federally recognized oversight bureau, like CFPB, a company should be required to resolve the dispute before prosecuting what they define as a breach of debt.
Banks and companies should not be allowed to try to prosecute over "missed" payments that were erroneously processed by them. Especially when evidence has been provided to the contrary and disputes are on file.
Continuing to place the burden of proof on the consumer is onerous and prohibitive for many consumers. I personally had a problem with a mortgage company and the amount of my time it took to get the problem resolved was worth 20% of the original principal amount. If a consumer complaint is on file, the company should be burdened with disproving the consumer complaint before prosecuting. They have both the financial and personnel resources to do so, whereas a consumer usually does not. Otherwise, why wouldn't they continue to bully and defraud consumers to boost bottom line profits?
Enlisting the help of an attorney or other intermediary should also be considered a dispute. I had both my attorney and my financial advisor contact my lender. Emails, phone calls and letters all constitute disputes.
I think somehow it should be taken into account that a consumer may not know the specific cause of the dispute but they may know that the end result is wrong.
Here's my example to help define this. I knew I had made "x" number of principal payments on my loan and my lender claimed I had made "y" number of principal payments. I had emails and cancelled checks supporting the "x" number of payments and the history from my issuing bank also supported my case and dates.
My lender refused to investigate, saying they had done everything just as I asked and I had instructed them to apply "y" number of payments to principal. They had no documentation to back up this assertion (their documentation was just a statement of how they processed my payments, not any of my direction). In order to get my situation fixed, I had to find the specific payment the lender misapplied from their own records, which were a mess due to the amount of errors they had made. This was not an easy task, as it was time consuming and the lenders records were not exactly layperson friendly reading.
A couple of things... the average joe may not be able to read an institution's financial recordkeeping. Also, how much must be done to constitute "proof"? In my case, my bank's history, cancelled checks and emails were all sufficient proof to my mind and the extent of consumer responsibility. At that point, the institution needed to justify their claim beyond "we did what you told us to do" and to provide proof of exactly that.
One other dispute action - submitting an online payment and having a confirmation email and/or screenshot noting the payment amount and date the payment was submitted also constitute a dispute in the event the payment is not processed according to this direction.
michellem
1
If you have a standing complaint with a company's mishandling of your account and/or complaints with any federally recognized oversight bureau, like CFPB, a company should be required to resolve the dispute before prosecuting what they define as a breach of debt. Banks and companies should not be allowed to try to prosecute over "missed" payments that were erroneously processed by them. Especially when evidence has been provided to the contrary and disputes are on file. Continuing to place the burden of proof on the consumer is onerous and prohibitive for many consumers. I personally had a problem with a mortgage company and the amount of my time it took to get the problem resolved was worth 20% of the original principal amount. If a consumer complaint is on file, the company should be burdened with disproving the consumer complaint before prosecuting. They have both the financial and personnel resources to do so, whereas a consumer usually does not. Otherwise, why wouldn't they continue to bully and defraud consumers to boost bottom line profits?
View this comment in the discussion thread
michellem
2
Enlisting the help of an attorney or other intermediary should also be considered a dispute. I had both my attorney and my financial advisor contact my lender. Emails, phone calls and letters all constitute disputes. I think somehow it should be taken into account that a consumer may not know the specific cause of the dispute but they may know that the end result is wrong. Here's my example to help define this. I knew I had made "x" number of principal payments on my loan and my lender claimed I had made "y" number of principal payments. I had emails and cancelled checks supporting the "x" number of payments and the history from my issuing bank also supported my case and dates. My lender refused to investigate, saying they had done everything just as I asked and I had instructed them to apply "y" number of payments to principal. They had no documentation to back up this assertion (their documentation was just a statement of how they processed my payments, not any of my direction). In order to get my situation fixed, I had to find the specific payment the lender misapplied from their own records, which were a mess due to the amount of errors they had made. This was not an easy task, as it was time consuming and the lenders records were not exactly layperson friendly reading. A couple of things... the average joe may not be able to read an institution's financial recordkeeping. Also, how much must be done to constitute "proof"? In my case, my bank's history, cancelled checks and emails were all sufficient proof to my mind and the extent of consumer responsibility. At that point, the institution needed to justify their claim beyond "we did what you told us to do" and to provide proof of exactly that.
View this comment in the discussion thread
michellem
3
One other dispute action - submitting an online payment and having a confirmation email and/or screenshot noting the payment amount and date the payment was submitted also constitute a dispute in the event the payment is not processed according to this direction.
View this comment in the discussion thread