A District Court judge in Wisconsin has granted a defendant’s motion to dismiss after it was sued for violating the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act because it allegedly failed to correctly identify the creditor to whom a debt was owed in a collection letter.
A copy of the ruling in the case of Fellenz v. Stark Collection Agency can be accessed by clicking here.
The plaintiff incurred a debt from TDS, an internet service provider. The debt was placed with the defendant for collection and the defendant sent a collection letter to the plaintiff. The letter identified the creditor as “TDS-Medford – BO#0801.” The plaintiff filed suit, alleging the identification of the creditor was false and misleading because TDS was a “non-obvious” acronym and “TDS-Medford – BO#0801” did “not equate” with “TDS.” All JudgeWilliam Conley of the District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin had to do was go to the creditor’s website — which listed itself on the homepage as “TDS” to reject the plaintiff’s argument that consumers of any kind — unsophisticated or otherwise — would be confused or mislead by the acronym.
Regarding the other components of the creditor’s name, Judge Conley noted that “Medford” is the name of the city in which the plaintiff resides and said including that was “helpful” information to identify the debt in question. There was nothing in the complaint or the defendant’s motion to dismiss that details to what BO#0801 referred to, and while that may make a consumer, as well as Judge Conley, curious as to what it means, it “does not detract from the clear identification of ‘TDS’ as the source of the debt, particularly when the letter also prominently identifies” the plaintiff’s account number, Judge Conley wrote.
“Perhaps if there were something about the BO#0801 reference that was confusing or the TDS account number was wrong, there might be an arguable question of fact, which cannot be resolved at the pleadings stage,” he said in granting the motion to dismiss. “Indeed, even as an unsophisticated consumer, Fellenz would have to have been deliberately obtuse not to understand that a reference to “TDS-Medford-BO#0801” and her TDS account number concerned a debt owed to her internet service provider TDS Telecom.”
