Lately I’ve been on a bit of a tangent about what I consider very unethical practices by debt collectors.

Yesterday I was faxed a sleazy little letter that I’ve never seen before. Wait until you see this one.

Click this link and see if you’ve ever seen this letter?

Read it very carefully. It appears it’s from American Express asking you to come back as a client. It does mention you may have a balance and if you pay it off they will issue you a shiny new card.

It carries the American Express Logo and is signed by a M. Rabinowitz Director, American Express.

It gives you a number to take advantage of this “limited Time Offer” and if you call it, you are calling a collection agent;  GC Collection Services.

Now, Im going to throw a blanket disclaimer out right now since our legal council is still reviewing this document. Every comment I make is my preliminary opinion. We have not yet determined if its legal or who authorized it, but Im pretty there are some serious violations with this one.

Here are my initial thoughts.

I believe we will find out this letter is illegal in several ways.

a) Deceptive, misleading and potentially fraudulent.
b) There is no mini Miranda. as mandated by 15 U.S.C.A § 1692g(a)(3) that basically states you have the right to dispute the debt etc etc etc
c) Another potential problem I see is that it could easily appear as a junk mail, credit card offer.

Well, most of us throw those away. If you throw this one away,you could be giving up your right to dispute a debt because you thought it was junk mail.

I’ve called GC Collection Services and they said they are authorized by American Express to use those letters.

I’ve also called American Express and they say they never have heard of such a letter.

If my thoughts are correct there could be a class action suit here. Who is responsible and to blame? We’ll see. IN the meantime if you see one of these letters please let us know.