RE: https://infosec.exchange/@ubernostrum/116184516972371923
I’m still looking for resources here if you know of any (tl;dr a company threatening debt collection over an account they admit is not mine).
I suspect a single piece of correspondence on law-firm letterhead resolves this, but for every firm I've talked to the dollar amount at issue is too low to even justify talking to one of their attorneys.
@ubernostrum it's going to cost you $300-600 for that letterhead. Your options are that, pay the amount they're pestering you about, or ignore them.
Or, perhaps a secret fourth option, you could try calling their legal department and let them know that you will pursue legal action unless they desist. Make sure you have a one sentence ("I received a collections notice for an account that doesn't belong to me"), 30s, and 2m summary of your issue so you can escalate appropriately
@ehashman It's an interesting and frustrating situation. When I was younger and living in pretty significant poverty, there probably would have been a legal-aid society or something that could have helped me with this. Or if I were significantly richer than I am, I'd likely have an established regular relationship with a law firm and could just have them deal with this as part of their ongoing work for me. But in between those two economic extremes, there's basically not a lot of help available, because not a lot of firms want to take a case this small as a one-off even with a client who could easily pay them to do it.
Though I am admittedly guessing at the amount in dispute, because I literally don't know what it is. Their systems (correctly) identified that I'm not the account owner, so wouldn't let me actually see the tickets they were filing for past-due amounts, even though they were also emailing me about those tickets.
For now, I'm continuing to work leads, and have also filed a complaint with the state attorney general's office, to see if that'll get anywhere.
James Bennett
e. hashman 🇵🇸