I'm going back and forth with a 3rd party collection agency and was wondering if a 3rd party collection agency can lawfully collect a debt if there is no contract between the collection agency and the original creditor that expressly transfers the legal right to collect this debt to the collection agency.

In other words... if a person had a contract with company A (original creditor); and company A sells the account to company B (3rd party collection agency); can company B lawfully collect this debt if there is no contract between company B and company A? [Also, assuming, there is no contract between company B (collection agency) and the person who owes the debt (debtor)].

If the answer is that they can lawfully collect the debt, even if there is no contract between the collection agency and original creditor or debtor; what gives them the legal authority to do so?

Thanks in advance!

If company A SELLS the debt to company B there is a contract, the sells agreement, and company B now owns the original contract between the debtor and the orgianal company.

It is where a collection agency only works on behalf of company A but does not buy the loan, where there has to be a formal agreement.

Once the debt is bought, it is thiers to collect since they own it.

We are in the same boat. We rented a 'storage unit' to move. We used the unit for some time but paid in advance. We didn't receive a statement for sometime so my husband went to the location where it was rented from and the new owner had not heard of us nor the unit we had used. We tried to call the business before my husband went to the location and after we tried to call the old owners (finding the number in the phone book). With no luck we didn't know what to do.


We waited and nothing. One day months down the road I got an email from the 'new owner' stating we owed him a large sum of money. I told him that we didn't know who the unit belonged to for a long time. I asked about purchasing it as we had used and paid the other owners up to date. He said we could prurchase it but we still owe the 'large sum' of money.

We didn't have any agreement written absolutely nothing with the 1st owners we paid and we used, when we were finished using it we tried to return the unit.

We now have a 3rd party collector after us for the amount due... what do I do? It sat empty on our property for a few months, also we had some damaged to our belongings.

The new owner also came onto our property when there was a no Tresspassing Sign...

Please Help! Need advice