Spouse's Old telephone bill and statute of limitations ...

[Trandi]

What is the name of your state? Ohio

Around the 2001 timeframe, my wife had received a telephone bill and the amount of $475 (approximately) prior to the time that I knew her. She thought there was a big mistake, but being nonconfrontational , she did not fight it. In retribution she canceled her phone service, and over the next few months threw away any bills that she received from them.

I met my wife in 2002, and we were married in late 2004. She had never received anything more on the issue until yesterday. It appears a collection agency has picked up the debt, or at least representing the telephone company in the debt collection.

As it has been approximately five years... I did some inquiring on the statute of limitations ... I found in the Ohio revised code (section 1302.98) that there is a four year limit relating to debt on "contracts for sale" I have included an excerpt below:

§ 1302.98. (UCC 2-725) Statute of limitations in contracts for sale.

(A) An action for breach of any contract for sale must be commenced within four years after the cause of action has accrued. By the original agreement the parties may reduce the period of limitation to not less than one year but may not extend it.

(B) A cause of action accrues when the breach occurs, regardless of the aggrieved party's lack of knowledge of the breach. A breach of warranty occurs when tender of delivery is made, except that where a warranty explicitly extends to future performance of the goods and discovery of the breach must await the time of such performance, the cause of action accrues when the breach is or should have been discovered.

(C) Where an action commenced within the time limited by division (A) of this section is so terminated as to leave available a remedy by another action for the same breach, such other action may be commenced after the expiration of the time limited and within six months after the termination of the first action unless the termination resulted from voluntary discontinuance or from dismissal for failure or neglect to prosecute.
So my question is: Does this statute of limitations apply to utility bills, specifically, telephone bills from long distance service ?? If not, does anyone know what statute of limitations that this would fall under?? ... or, would anyone know where I could find more information???

thank you ...What is the name of your state?

 

[DRTDEVL]

The SOL for the phone bill would fall under UCC, not Written Contracts. The UCC SOL is 4 years, though, so no sweat.

You might want to post this under the debt collection forum for a more thorough analysis, but here is my take:

You now have a collection agency trying to collect on it... It is more than likely a junk debt buyer. You have several options on how to proceed.

1. Send a cease and desist. They should go away quietly, but the collection will remain on your credit reports.

2. Demand VALIDATION (not verification) of the debt within 30 days of the letter. They must stop all collection activity until they provide you with proper validation of the debt. A debt is not validated by sending a screen print from their database, nor is it validated by sending an "Affidavit of Fact" (since the person signing it was not there to witness the debt being created). If either of these are provided, send another demand for validation, and let them know this is not acceptable under the FDCPA. If they do, however, come up with the actual full accounting of the debt (copies of the bills where the charges were accrued, and every bill thereafter until it was charged off), you then send a cease and desist to them. If they don't, you need to fight them tooth and nail to get the debt off of your reports.

For further information, you can consult one of the various consumer debt websites, like Creditboards.

 

[racer72]

Sorry to say this but you are both wrong in determining the SOL for the debt. To the OP, the contracts for sale statute does not apply, the phone company is selling a service, not a contract. That statute would apply mainly to business agreements and performance based contracts. Phone service is considered a written account and the SOL is 6 years from the date of charge off. Look up O.R.C. §2305.07. The big words to remember is written account. If the debtor pushes for and the debt is considered a written contract, the SOL in Ohio is 15 years. If this happens, the debtor still has a long time to try to collect on the debt.