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Before you file bankruptcy, once you have a lawyer, you should tell your creditors when they call, “call my bankruptcy lawyer.”  The law assumes that most companies with a good name will leave you alone at that point.

In my experience that’s true of just about everybody, but not Navy Federal.

Navy Federal’s collection department says they will keep calling you day and night, until the bankruptcy is filed with the court.  And they do.  (Some people told us Navy Federal calls almost hourly until the bankruptcy is filed.)

I think this is a violation of Virginia law.  Code of Virginia § 18.2-429 makes it a class 3 misdemeanor to cause someone’s phone to ring with the “intent to annoy.”  And the law expressly says that it can still be illegal even if there is also an “intent to communicate.”

The punishment in Virignia for a class 3 misdemeanor is a fine of up to $500.

I think its pretty clear that when Navy Federal calls four or five times a day, after being told, “I can’t pay, call my bankruptcy lawyer, I have to file bankruptcy”–that’s calling with the intent to annoy.

This spring, we helped one of our clients sue Navy Federal to get them to stop violating Virginia law.  We didn’t get far.  Just because something is a criminal law violation,  does not mean a private citizen can sue to enforce it.

So, the judge made it clear we would lose, unless we dropped the case.  (Which we did.  We are going after them under Florida law, but that’s for another day.)  But the judge suggested, here on page 13, that we could “bring it back as a criminal offense.”

My before-bankruptcy clients seem to have fewer complaints about Navy Federal than they did this time last year.  Maybe that’s because they have gotten nicer.

Maybe it’s because their lawyers were listening to that judge.  I hope so.

PS October 2016, CFPB slams Navy Fed

Saw in this morning’s Washington Post that the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau went after Navy Fed.  Hit them for $23 million to unfair collection procedures.  I was really glad to see it.  You can read the Post story, here: Navy-Federal-to-pay-23-million.

PPS  January 2018, Navy Fed suddenly polite.

The last week of January brought a nice letter from a now very polite Navy FCU.  

NFCU was writing to tell me that Woodbridge resident “Stevie” asked them to stop calling her, and that they’d do it!  That’s a big change. 

Thank you Navy Federal.  I take back half the bad things I’ve said about you.

Here’s the polite letter

Here’s a sample of the polite letter Navy Federal sends now, when you tell them to “call my lawyer.”