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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 class-action complaint has been filed in federal court in New York accusing a defendant of violating the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act by not being consistent in the information it provided to the plaintiff in a pair of collection notices.
A copy of the complaint, filed in the District Court for the Southern District of New York, can be accessed using case number 23-cv-00988 or by clicking here.
The plaintiff received two collection letters from the defendant that were sent about three weeks apart from one another. Both letters offered to settle the debt — $7,053.84 — for less than the full balance owed. The first letter offered a one-time payment equal to 25% of the amount owed, and the second letter offered three options — a one-time payment equal to 25% of the amount owed, 12 monthly payments equal to 30% of the amount owed, and 24 monthly payments to repay the full balance.
The difference between the two letters is that the first included a disclosure indicating that the statute of limitations may have expired on the debt. The five paragraph disclosure is in a different color and provides details about what could happen if a payment is made. The letter indicates that the defendant is “required by regulation of the New York State Department of Financial Services to notify you of the following information.” The second letter contains no such disclosure.
This, from the plaintiff’s perspective, implied that the debt is not time-barred, creating a contradiction between the two letters and leaving them open to more than one reasonable interpretation.
The complaint accuses the defendant of violating Sections 1692e, 1692e(2), 1692e(10), and 1692f of the FDCPA. The suit seeks to include anyone else in New York who received letters containing “conflicting information” about whether the statute of limitations had expired, according to the complaint.
