Collection Craziness

Good News: 11-09-07
Willie Just called and said that the Department of Education in Washington D.C. is taking care of the problem. Willie says the ombudsman who worked his case apologized and told him he shouldn’t be getting any more harrassing phone calls or letters. Willie thanked That Is Messed Up for getting involved.

This is one story that I am very pleased ended well.

Below is the original story:

Wearing coveralls and a freshly laundered dress shirt, 82 year old Willie J. Young walks me around his expansive property surrounded by trees and grass.

Willie’s hair is white as is a thin mustache he wears above his lip.

As we walk around his property, he calls to his dog, Lady, in a nearby pen.

“Hey Lady, Hey Girl.”

The dog barks a happy yelp.

Willie is a father of four. He is a grand father. He has been married to his lovely wife Lucille for more than 50 years. On this day as we stand in his back yard, next to a home he mostly built himself, there is a gentle breeze. I can feel the warmth of the sun shining down on a devout family man whose life has traversed 9 decades.

“There is no mortgage,” he says referencing his home. “Never been a mortgage. I started from scratch. I built the footing. I lived out here when my oldest son was 8, that was some 43 years ago.”

As Willie tells me about his life, he gestures frequently, his large hands pointing out various items that fall into his field of vision.

“I have a beautiful wife and daughter,” he says right off. “I love my family.”

Willie’s demeanor is calm and his words come in bunches like a wave crashing on the shore.

“I love to live in peace with my neighbors. with all men as far as possible. I believe in the Christian life. I like to do right by everyone. I am a very calm and timid person most of the time, but I don’t let people push me around too far.”

Willie was born in 1925 and he tells me that he has always worked, ever since he was 7 years old. He says this is the way his daddy brought him up.

“I don’t like people to make claims against me when I know that they are lies,” he says his blue eyes becoming fixed on something far off in the distance.

For the last 15 years, Willie J. Young tells me that he has been getting, what he calls harassing phone calls from a myriad of collection agencies for a student loan he never applied for.

“Did you take out a loan?” I ask.

“No. No. I worked a while and I saved my money. People don’t know how to save money. People can make
50-thousand dollars and have nothing to spend. I never made that much money in my life. I only made 23,000 in one year.”

Talking to Willie J. Young I get the impression that the man born in the roaring 20’s is not a wasteful man. Willie doesn’t buy on credit.

Willie tells me that he is a World War II veteran and he went to college in Oklahoma City on the GI Bill.

“This boy was trying to make me pay his college loan,” Willie says with a grimace. “I didn’t need a college loan.”

“You are an 82 year old white man. And he is a 40 something year old black man, how do they make this mistake?” I ask the good natured senior.

“That’s what I don’t understand,” he says with a chortle.

Willie has been dealing with a collections nightmare since 1992. That’s when Willie says the phone calls and letters from obnoxious collections people started pouring in. Suddenly Willie J Young, the father of 4, the life long carpenter, the man who only uses cash is being accused of defaulting on a student loan.

“I have written to the dept of education and people who send me letters, and all these collections agencies. But when they call, they try and make you think they are an arm of the government. Just the other day, this girl called and said are you Willie Young. Yes I am, I say. And I said you have the wrong Willie Young. She started on me like gang busters. She didn’t give me the chance to say you have the wrong person. She said you owe the government $23,000 and I said you are crazy!!”

At first Willie figured it was all a mistake, and the collection agents would figure out that they had the wrong Willie J Young. Willie threw away the first letters. Still the letters and phone calls kept coming.

Diversified collection services and the national payment center of the US Department of Education and threatening notices from Accord one.

Willie’s family called the collection agencies. Willie’s family hired a lawyer. Willie’s family wrote to the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance and the Department of Education. Nothing worked.

The calls would sometimes subside, but they always rekindled, as one lending institution passed the delinquent loan on to the next and on to the next, for 15 straight years.

“It makes you lose your temper right quick,” Willie says, his eyes focused and determined. “I said you are crazy as hell. And she said you owe the government 23K and you are going to pay it and I say no I am not going to pay it, cause I don’t owe it. You don’t call me here no more. You stop harassing me. And she said I am not harassing you. I said, what do you mean you are not harassing me. You are calling me for 10 minutes for a debt I don’t owe, is that not harassment?”

I go inside the Young home and meet his daughter Gail Lee. Gail is standing in front of a table loaded with court papers and loan documents.

Gail shows me a copy of the original loan.

The loan is for 4,000 dollars and is made out to a Willie J. Young who is going to study accounting at T.S.U.

The Willie J Young on the loan document has a different birthday and social security number than the Willie J Young I am talking to.

“It is a shame they are too lazy to do their job and find the right person,” Gail Lee tells me. Her hair is red and her eyes blue like her daddy’s. She is composed, but I can tell 2 decades of this insanity has made her angry.

“It was easy enough for us to find out info on him. We got a private investigator and all the info we wanted,” she tells me.

Gail shows me an extensive array of information on the other Willie James Young who is black, 42 years of age, and who has had a few run ins with the metro police.

“He is a younger black man? How do they make this mistake?” I ask.

“That’s a good question,” she says rolling her eyes.

“We hope you can help us answer that. We have been trying to find out. We had an attorney send letters to the dept of education. It begins with this loan. It is frustrating for all of us. Not sure what to do. Obviously, we had an attorney write letters in the past. Has done no good. Talk to the collections agencies, they don’t care. They just want their money.”

I ask how the plethora of letters and obnoxious calls affect her mild mannered dad.

“He gets very upset. This last call, last week, the lady was rude, told him she would make him pay the money
She was pretty rude and nasty.”

Back outside, Willie J Young tells me that some collections agents demand he prove he isn’t the dead beat. They often ask for his social security number. But this sagacious old fox is not about to give out his social security number to some voice over the phone.

“I don’t give it to him,” he says laughing. “But I do say, I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you my army serial number.”

He blurts out a series of numbers that he has kept in his head for 60 years.

I can’t help but laugh out loud.

“What do they do when you tell them that?”

“Nothing.”

“So if you were captured by the Nazis, or a band of collection agencies come after you, I guess you could give them your name rank and serial number.”

Once again he blurts out the serial numbers.

Before leaving, the pleasant man who doesn’t deserve this kind of trouble in his golden years, invites me to a bar b que at his home.

I thank him for his hospitality and tell him I will do the best I can for him.

I call TSU and talk with new director of public relations, Cheryl Bates-Lee who tells me that she will check on whether the younger Willie J Young attended the school. She tells me that the laws of confidentiality will prevent her from telling me much more.

In a follow up call, T.S.U. officials confirm that Willie J Young was a student at TSU.
Fall semester of 1984 to fall semester of 1991

I asked if he ever graduated? They are checking.

I guess he was on the 7 year plan, learning a little bit at a time.

I call Metro Police and give them all the information I have on the man. His social security number, name and date of birth all correspond to a man who has had several run ins with the police for issues like disorderly conduct and driving on suspended license infractions.

We go to the last known address for this Willie J Young. We bang on the door, but nobody answers.

I call Michael Kincaid, who is the collection manager with the Tennessee Student Assistance Corporation,. a state entity that manages collection agencies and related issues and negotiates settlements.

Mr. Kincaid knows the loan business inside and out and he tells me that the younger Willie J Young does not show up as ever having a student loan managed by the state of Tennessee.

“Unfortunately, I am not sure what we can do,” Kincaid says thinking about the 82 year old man’s plight.

“First of all; The Willie young with the debt is not one of our borrowers. He has a loan through the dept of education or another guarantor.”

What do you think? I ask.

“Unfortunately, there is no easy fix. When the collection agencies don’t have the social security number of who they need, they use name searches and data searches and the internet. And this old guy has the same name as the young Willie Young. They contact him and try and squeeze him for money.”

What can he do? I ask.

“I would encourage him to log the company and time of call and name of the collector. There are strict regulations what they can say and when they call. If he asks them to put them on a do not call list, that will help for a while till he is reassigned.

I would encourage him to log the company and time of call and name of the collector. There are strict regulations what they can say and when they call. If he asks them to put them on a do not call list, that will help for a while till he is reassigned.

Is there a way to stop it I ask.

“Not really. So many agencies not communicating to each other. The system is, you have a bunch of entities that don’t know how to interact with each other. There is no way to raise a flag and say don’t call me anymore.”

I ask how long this could go on. He tells me that there is no statute of limitations on student loans. So this could go on till the day he dies, and beyond that.

He tells me about the Federal Trade Commission’s Fair debt Collection Practices Act.” which he says was created to protect people like the senior Willie J Young. Below is a copy of the applicable paragraphs:

§ 806. Harassment or abuse [15 USC 1692d]A debt collector may not engage in any conduct the natural consequence of which is to harass, oppress, or abuse any person in connection with the collection of a debt. Without limiting the general application of the foregoing, the following conduct is a violation of this section:
(1) The use or threat of use of violence or other criminal means to harm the physical person, reputation, or property of any person.
(2) The use of obscene or profane language or language the natural consequence of which is to abuse the hearer or reader.
(3) The publication of a list of consumers who allegedly refuse to pay debts, except to a consumer reporting agency or to persons meeting the requirements of section 603(f) or 604(3) of this Act.
(4) The advertisement for sale of any debt to coerce payment of the debt.
(5) Causing a telephone to ring or engaging any person in telephone conversation repeatedly or continuously with intent to annoy, abuse, or harass any person at the called number.
(6) Except as provided in section 804, the placement of telephone calls without meaningful disclosure of the caller’s identity.

Last but not least, I am in contact with the Department of Education in Washington D.C.
I speak to Jane Glickman in the media relations office.

She tells me that the “Department of Education is on it. Once we get his paperwork, and if it is clearly a case of mistaken identity, then we will resolve it.”

She tells me that there are more than a hundred Willie Youngs in the system”

In an emailed quote, she writes:

We are happy to help Mr. Young sort out any misunderstandings over this federal student loan. We only learned of this case yesterday, and are working though our ombudsman’s office to resolve it in a timely fashion, pending receipt of the requested documentation.
We regret he did not contact our office sooner and apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Our ombudsman’s office is always available to help at http://www.ombudsman.ed.gov/ or 1-877-557-2575.

November 6th, 2007 Posted by Andy | Uncategorized | 2 comments