I have hundreds of names of debt collectors and each and every time I look one of them up online, it is nothing but trouble. That should tell you that you can win against a debt collector. Not only you, but thousands of other people get sued by that very same debt collector across the country.

I see posts from attorney’s websites trying to help consumers fight their debt collection lawsuit because they know, just as much as I know, that they can beat it. But most of us cannot afford an attorney and that is when we need to start fighting these debt collectors all on our own. I’ve done it; I’ve beaten them all because I knew in my gut that giving me a summons and complaint didn’t prove anything. I wanted them to prove all the things that they claimed I did wrong. I wanted them to prove that they owned the debt to even be able to sue me. So the lawsuit can and will contain errors right from the beginning before you even step into the courtroom.

“In my experience, I have found that the lawsuits filed by Midland Funding are usually legally insufficient, at least when they are initially filed. We object to these lawsuits on insufficiency grounds with great success.”

What that means is that each state has rules and when most of these debt collectors hire an attorney to sue you, their lawsuit contains errors right from the start. They do not follow your court rules, and attorneys jump on them right away, before the lawsuit even begins by filing motions to dismiss for not proving you had a credit account with Midland, for not proving that you defaulted on that account, for not proving that you agreed to pay the interest and again, as I have said, for not proving that they even have the right to sue you. The attorneys see what I see and what you should now see: just a summons and a complaint isn’t enough when a lot of states require proof of ownership of the debt (assignment), and proof that you owe the money that they say you owe them etc.

When you get sued, see the summons and complaint and have no idea what you are doing, the debt collectors win. You are not an attorney; you have no idea that they have to prove so many things in a court of law. So most will call the debt collector and settle. Most people are intimidated by a lawsuit and don’t have the time to fight it and just ignore it, not even answering the summons. That is what debt collectors want. They want you to ignore the summons so that they win the entire lawsuit by default and then you owe them every single cent because you didn’t answer your summons. But I have talked about the importance of answering your summons in previous posts that you should read so I’m not going to get into that right now.

To explain things better to those of you who just have been sued and received just a simple summons with a complaint attached – Does this make sense to you? Have you ever heard of the debt collector suing you? Even if you received phone calls from them or payment demand letters, do you ever remember signing a contract with this company? Do you remember receiving any letter stating that they bought your account from the bank that you actually opened the account with? Were you given any notice at all that they were taking over your account? Do you remember agreeing to the fees? Agreeing to pay all that interest they claim you owe them? Do you remember the amount being as much as they state? You probably don’t and that is where the fight begins. That is where you use your local court rules and check them to see what is required to be attached to the complaint or proven with this lawsuit. Just because they state all of this on a piece of paper does not necessarily mean it is true. And most of you are reading your complaint wondering how all these fees were incurred and why you owe this company so much money. This should be the light bulb going off in your head saying “Hey! Something’s not right”, and you are probably right.

I believe I’ve said this in a previous post but I will say it again: Just because this company files a lawsuit against you does not mean that they are going to win. Yes, it is scary to receive a summons and yes, it automatically makes you assume that you are in trouble and are going to lose because an attorney is after you with a lawsuit. But the system protects the defendant just as much as it protects the plaintiff. The plaintiff is the one who started the lawsuit and is the one that is claiming that you owe them all kinds of money for this and that now it is up to the plaintiff to prove everything. Collection attorneys assume that if you cannot pay your credit card bill that you would not have the money to hire an attorney or be smart enough to answer your summons and fight them back. Remember, they just want a default judgment. If you are reading this article right now you are smart enough to know that something isn’t right and you are prepared to fight them back. And that is exactly what you should be doing because the chances of them proving anything are slim to none.

When a debt collector purchases old debt, it is purchased with hundreds, maybe even thousands of other defaulted credit card accounts. They buy all of these accounts together. So if you owed Providian $5,000.00 and they now own that account they did not purchase your account for $5,000.00 they most likely got your account for approximately $15.00 – $40.00. So, when they sue you and you ignore the lawsuit they get the default judgment against you and just made $4,900.00 in profits. That is why they purchase old debt looking for default judgments. After the default judgment comes against you, they proceed with freezing bank accounts and garnishing wages.

Now when you are sued by a debt collector, and let’s say they are claiming you owe them $5,000.00. A lot of people will assume that they owe them that $5,000.00 but it is the bank that you actually owe that money to, the bank that you opened the account with. You don’t owe a debt collector anything until they prove that you do. They can’t just say you owe them money and get the money. The only way they can sue you and get that money without proving anything is if you avoid answering your summons. Hypothetically speaking let’s say that you owed Providian $5,000.00 and the debt collector suing you paid $4,500.00 to buy your account. You can guarantee the debt collector will make sure that every single document was included with that sale and they will make sure that their assignment of debt is perfect and all their paperwork is immaculate. If they don’t, then they are risking losing the $4,500.00 they just spent on your account.

But in the real world it doesn’t work that way. Debt collectors do not buy old credit card accounts for high prices, they do not purchase accounts one by one (they are purchased in bulk), they do not make sure that all the documents needed to prove your debt and account are intact with the bill of sale. So, they buy these accounts in bulk for pennies and when they win they make thousands of dollars per account and that is why the debt collection business is a billion dollar industry.

What should make all of you mad right now is that the attorneys that they hire don’t have the documents to prove their case in a court of law, and most do not attach any proof what so ever to your complaint when a lot of states require that proof is to be attached to the complaint in order to initiate the lawsuit. That is what the attorney above meant, that in his state there are requirements to initiate a lawsuit but the agencies are not meeting those requirements. The attorneys know this so they can get the lawsuit dismissed before it begins. But, these collection attorneys sadly can get away with it if you, the consumer, do not know your court rules, do not know what is required to be attached to your complaint and you don’t fight the lawsuit, nor write up the correct motion in order to dismiss the case for non-compliance with your court rules.

Debt collectors pay pennies for your account. When they sue you they are looking to cash in on the thousands of dollars that they did not pay for your account. They cash in on the thousands of dollars when people do not answer their summons, when people do not read their court rules to get their cases dismissed for errors, and for not following their court rules.

Now if you were to answer your summons like you are supposed to, do you honestly believe that they would have a problem dismissing your case right then and there when they would only lose the $15.00 they spent on your account? No they wouldn’t because they were looking to win the thousands of dollars in profit when they purchased your account. Most do not want to deal with the people who choose to fight back and answer their summons, the people who know their rights, the people who will win against them, because then they lose money. They know they’ll lose the case and just by you answering your summons you are now making them work, making them find documents they don’t own, making them prove they own your account etc., and they don’t want to deal with people as smart as you, people who chose to answer their summons. They want the people who are stupid and ignore their summons so that they can get the default judgment, and with the default judgment they can get your bank account frozen and take your money, and then garnish your paycheck. All of that because those people chose not to fight back and gave into them.

Even people who want to settle with them because they don’t have the fight in them should think again. Is it worth fighting for those thousands of dollars or is it easier for you to pay off people who have never proven to you they even own that account? That’s like a freebie to them.

When Capital One Bank sued me I just thought: You know what? I’m not writing them out a check. I’m going to see how far I can take this. I ended up winning. I thought I would lose that case, and I felt that if it came to a point in the case where I thought I was going to lose, then I still had time to settle, no matter where we were in that case. I could still avoid getting a judgment against me. So I fought them just to see if I could win, and if I couldn’t win then I’d settle with them and avoid the judgment anyway. As it turned out they lost and it only took a few hours of my time and I saved $2,000.00 plus. So instead of giving up, instead of letting them win, see how far you can take these guys and always know in the back of your head that if they come up with the assignment, statements, and all the documents needed to prevail (which is highly unlikely) just know you can pull them aside and settle and avoid the judgment. But see how far you can go and I bet you win it all the way.

So to all of you reading this right now, how far do you think you can take these guys if you don’t even try? I guess, you’ll never know. I know I would have other things to spend my hard earned money on than paying off a company that didn’t prove to me I owed them one dime.

Additional Information

• Steven

  “Thanks for the advice. I have not received a summons yet but I know I am being sued by Care Credit. I recently received solicitation letters from lawyers offering to take my case. I had no idea that the situation had escalated this far and Care Credit (GE Money Bank) gave me notification whatsoever about a lawsuit.
  
  I tried calling the company for more information and of course they were not helpful and one rude customer rep even told me that I must consult a lawyer.
  
  Obviously, I do not have the funds to pay a lawyer so if I ever receive a summons I will certainly show up and defend myself. You mentioned knowing local court laws. I live in New York City. Can you recommend a website that outlines the laws for this type of case so I know what to do in the future? I am searching now but receiving so much extraneous or unrelated information from my search query.