Complaint Review: Diversified Adjustments Services

Last summer,my cell phone from Sprint got spoofed.  While I have had bills as high as 400 dollars, this bill was nearly $1,000- it contained hundreds of dollars of long distance calls that I DID NOT MAKE! 

Like I am supposed to do, I reported the incident to the NYPD and they opend a grand theft investigation.  I informed Sprint- their response was "Upgrade to the unlimited plan and we'll forgive the charges."  I could have never afforded that offer since I had just been laid off that month.  Not only that, those were not my calls!

I refused their offer, terminated my service, and swtiched our service to Verizon, where we've been very happy for the last nine and a half months.  However, Sprint was not done with me.  They turned me over at first to Allied Interstate.  I wrote a standard DV letter that I got from fairdebtcollection.com and never heard from them again. 

Last Thursday, as I was on the way to a job interview, I got an angry phone call from my father-in-law.  It seems that Diversified Adjustments Services called him and asked him to get a message to me.  I called them and found out that they were the ones who now had this questionable bill.  I informed them of the spoofing and was incredulous that in this day and age of technology, I had to explain what spoofing was and that with a readily available police scanner, it was also simple.  They accused me of lying and became verbally abusive.  I terminated the conversation by saying that I would never pay for phone calls I didn't make.

I then contacted Sprint's collections department and started asking questions.  I found out that Sprint had given them my current address, but my old home phone number before the temporary disconnect in 2007 when I was injured in a workplace accident.  That begged the question of how they got my in-laws' number since I hadn't lived there in four years when I signed on with Sprint.

Yesterday, I got my first written communication from them, dated April 23, 2010.  It clearly showed my current address, which I have lived at for the last ten years.  It goes to prove that Diversified violatedmy FDCPA rights in the following ways.

1. The initial contact with the debtor must be in writing.  Their initial contact was a phone call, and it was not to me, but to my in-laws, who are elderly.

2. If the creditor has the correct location information for the debtor, then they cannot contact a third party for any reason about the debt.  They did just that by calling my father-in-law.  They had no right to do that since the letter did arrive, proving that they hadmy correct address and a method of contacting me directly.  That is a violation of the FDCOA, section 805 (b) 2 because the collector clearly has my location information in his possession.

In a fair debt collection lawsuit, which I am contemplating, that is $1,000 per violation.  I count two violations already.  Last summer, Palisades Collections went after my husband and repeatedly contacted his parents and us, also in violation of the FDCPA.  We ended up settling out of court,but we still won.  I hope Diversified ia ready to take me on!