EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is part of a series that is sponsored by WebRecon. WebRecon identifies serial plaintiffs lurking in your database BEFORE you contact them and expose yourself to a likely lawsuit. Protect your company from as many as one in three new consumer lawsuits by scrubbing your consumers through WebRecon first. Want to learn more? Call (855) WEB-RECON or email admin@webrecon.net today! Thanks to WebRecon for sponsoring this series.
DISCLAIMER: This article is based on a complaint. The defendant has not responded to the complaint to present its side of the case. The claims mentioned are accusations and should be considered as such until and unless proven otherwise.
A plaintiff has filed a class-action lawsuit against a creditor and two collection agencies for not honoring the terms of a payment plan that she entered with the creditor, accusing them of violating the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and state collection laws in Florida.
A copy of the complaint can be accessed using case number 23-cv-00285 or by clicking here.
The plaintiff incurred a debt to the creditor, and entered into a payment plan for nine monthly payments to cover the remaining balance. Three payments were automatically withdrawn from the plaintiff’s account. When the fourth payment was not taken, the plaintiff logged into the defendant’s portal and made the payment herself. When the fifth payment wasn’t taken, the plaintiff logged into the portal, but the payment was not accepted. The plaintiff contacted the creditor, was told the account had accidentally been sent to collections because of a change in its billing system that had created a system-wide error.
A month later, one of the collection agency defendants began contacting the plaintiff to collect on the unpaid balance. The plaintiff again reached out to the creditor and was told the situation would be rectified and that the calls from the agency would cease. Months later, the other agency began contacting the plaintiff to collect on the unpaid debt.
The complaint accuses the defendants of violating provisions of the Florida Consumer Collection Practices Act and Sections 1692f(1) of the FDCPA. The complaint seeks to create two classes of plaintiffs — one for violations of the FCCPA and one for violations of the FDCPA.
