I was being harassed & legally extorted by a collection agency & their client, a cable TV company, but I beat them myself with no lawyer’s fees . . .

The cable company overcharged me almost $200 when I canceled my service toward the end of the month, yet they continued to bill me into the next month.  I wouldn’t pay it, so they gave it to the collection agent who, instead of contacting me about it & negotiating it or providing me with evidence of the debt, they instead held my credit history (and essentially my entire life) hostage by putting it on my credit report immediately & didn’t bother to contact me to try to collect it first.  I didn’t find out until I applied for credit some months later & was denied.  They wouldn’t remove it whether I paid or disputed it & they had no proof I owed it.

After arguing with them for a month, I paid it, then sued the cable company myself without a lawyer (“pro se” they call it) for the $200 I paid them.  I sued them in my state’s District Court/Small Claims Court (the lowest level, where I knew I could get a quick trial) & also asked for $10,000 in damages, which was the dollar limit of Small Claims.  I asked for punitive damages because I knew it would get their attention even though I knew that they don’t typically award punitive damages at this level.

It took me 4 months total, but the lawyer for the cable company was a contracted lawyer in my area & just wanted to get it settled & was real nice & polite; we never went to court.  I said “let’s make a deal — keep the $200, plus no reimbursement for my $150 lawsuit filing fee, and I’ll forget about the $10,000, but I want ALL evidence of the collection removed from my credit report (not just showing “paid”) at all 3 major credit bureaus, and my offer is firm”, which of course is only what I wanted all along.  He said no problem & it was done within a few weeks.  Cost me $350 & some time, but my credit is clean once again and it saved me thousands in interest costs as I was about to get a $300,000 mortgage.

I also beat a lawyer/collection agent who tried to collect an invalid debt against my dear old 85-yr old mom before she died, a debt that she didn’t owe for a contract for services that she never signed & never used.  There are a lot of companies that prey on old ladies, and this was one of them — a complete scam operation.

I beat them by simply citing the state law.  Collection agencies usually try to sue people to collect a debt that is over 3 years old (which is the limit for collecting it in our state) by claiming it’s a “breach of contract” lawsuit, which has a 6-year statute of limitations, but a bad debt is NOT a breach of contract under the laws of my state.

I first filed a Response to Complaint for my mom a soon as she got the notice, because if you don’t respond within the time frame required by the court (30 days in our case), we’d automatically lose.

I then followed it up 3 days later with a Motion to Dismiss With Prejudice (“with” prejudice means they can’t ever refile the case again, vs “without” prejudice) and requested the court dismiss the case due to the Bad Debt statute being only 3 years from the date of last activity — they call that the “DLA” in the credit/collection biz, and that this debt was older than 3 years & that they were trying to circumvent state law using the Breach of Contract statute.

Within 30 days, the lawyer filed its own Motion to Dismiss With Prejudice knowing they were beat.  I didn’t do this, but I should have filed a complaint with the State Bar in conjunction with it to put added pressure on them.  Of course, I’m not a lawyer and I’m not recommending anyone do this — I’m just sharing my own personal experiences an as anecdote on how I fought back & won.  Sadly, my mom died about a month before the case was settled & didn’t get a chance to see me win it for her, but she knew I would win anyway.