In Semptember of my partner Charlie, who has an impeccable credit report noticed an adverse account from Rickenbacker Collection Agency. When we called the toll-free number, we spoke with Jazmine Martine at Rickenbacker Collections. We were informed that we were being charged for towing expenses, lien charges, and auction fees for a Cadillac 84 that we once owned. The car was towed by the police on 7/7. Now mind you, we sold the car back in May to a college kid, submitted the release of liability with DMV and eventually shredded our copy! (Never do that&keep the copy!) We immediately disputed the charge and informed Ms. Martine that we will contact her in writing to absolutely dispute the charge, and informing Rickenbacker that they needed to "validate the debt, " and that we were disputing the charge. Several days later, they stated that the dispute was valid and that they wanted their $1900 immediately. We sent them another letter (all certified and requested receipt) stating that they were in violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices by not validating the debt. Another letter was sent to us, and they sent us a copy of a "notice of pending lien sale of vehicle" as copy of the validated debt. Looking at the copy of the notice, it was clearly on the copy that the registered owner of the Cadillac 84 was the person who we sold the car to back in 2004!!! We then sent another letter to Rickenback stating that we were not the registered owner of the car and that this needed to be cleared from my partner's credit report. Rickenbacker sent us anothe letter insisting that the debt was valid and they had every intentions on collecting the debt which by this time ballooned another 6%! The last letter that we sent to Rickenbacker informed them that they were again in violation of the Fair Debt Collection Act and (that we had every intention of suing them in small claims court as they were only a few counties away from us), and taking legal recourses to protect ourselves. Every letter that was sent to and back to Rickenback — I forwarded every letter to the District Attorney of Santa Clara, the District Attorney of my county, Sonoma County, and to the California State Attorney General. A week and half later, we get a letter from Rickenbacker Collection Agency informing us that they were discontinuing all efforts to collect the debt and that they "regretted the error." We did get a call from the offices of the District Attorney of Santa Clara and from the California State Attorney General asking us if our conflict with Rickenbacker was resolved because they had intentions of going after them. We told them that after a month a half of squabbling with them, everything was dropped and when we checked Charlie's credit report, it was clear on all three credit reporting bureuas! Moral of the story:
If the debt is truly not yous&stand up to these highway thieves&and do not let them get away!!! I think sending copies of all the letters to the District Attorney and State Attorney General helped us out alot!!!
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