I disputed a debt but never heard back, I thought collectors had to validate debts?

Published: Thursday, August 31, 2006

If a consumer requests verification of a debt within 30 days of their receipt of the validation letter from the collector, the collector may either (a) provide verification and resume collection activity, or (b) cease collection activity until verification is furnished. Sometimes, collection activity is halted and the account is returned to the original creditor or cancelled. In that case, if the collector never resumes collection activity on that debt, the debt collector is not obligated to provide verification.

Some consumers confuse the thirty-day limit on investigations under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) Section 611 and Section 623(a)(8) with the thirty-day validation period of Section 809(a)(4) of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA). This leads consumers to believe that collection agencies must provide verification in response to a verification request within 30 days of the collector's receipt of the request. The FDCPA, however, does not limit the time in which a debt collector must verify a debt by a certain number of days.

Disputes submitted by a consumer to a consumer reporting agency (CRA) concerning the accuracy of a credit report pursuant to Section 611 (of the FCRA) must be investigated within 30 days of the consumer reporting agency's receipt of the dispute. If a consumer disputes a debt directly with a data furnisher, the data furnisher must investigate the dispute and respond to the consumer within thirty days of receipt of the dispute.

Section 809(b) of the FDCPA, however, requires that a debt collector, upon receipt of a dispute during the validation period, "cease collection of the debt, or any disputed portion thereof," until verification is mailed to the consumer by the debt collector. As long as collection activity is ceased, the debt collector may take as long as she likes to verify a debt.