Re: National Arbitration Forum - Lack of Notice

More | Report Post

Mailing so-called arbitrations "awards" to the wrong address is NAF standard operating
procedure.

The reason for this is that there is only an upside or them to do this, since, if the
alleged debtor does not respond to the "award" (which is often padded with un-itemised
excessive attorney and other fees) within 30 days, then most of the arguments that the
alleged debtor could have used to fight the "Award" are forfeited.

Add to that mix the fact that it's nearly impossible to prove a negative -- i.e. that
something did NOT happen, that you did NOT get something in the mail -- and the fact
that, for several reasons, most alleged debtors won't respond to the petition to the
court to confirm the "award," and it becomes clear that, for every deliberately mis-
addressed NAF "award" that fails due to lack of process, many more succeed.

For sure, the NAF can make a bundle of money selling these "awards" to the likes of
MBNA and then deliberately sending them to wrong addresses, or not sendingthem at all.

Actually, sending "awards" to wrong addresses is nothing more than an added service
that NAF provides to to the likes of MBNA, so that MBNA etc makes money and keeps
coming back to the NAF with its business.

The beauty of this scam is that, if the "award" is vacated (dismissed) by the court
(meaning that it is not enforced) due to lack of sufficient notice, then the likes of
MBNA can simply do the whole "arbitration" thing again... Or, they can sell the
alleged debt to someone else (perhaps Wolpoff & Abramson) and they can do the same
thing.

The good news, is that courts do (very slowly) seem to be taking more notice of this
scam. There have been a handful of recent rulings (MBNA v Credit (this is a person's
name); MBNA v Straub; MBNA v Boata; and, my favorite, MBNA v Nelson, which really goes
to town on the CC companies, the NAF and their phony "arbitration" clauses.

I am also personally aware of a case in my own state -- which is not Missouri -- in
which an arbitration "award" was vacated largely on the basis of lack of due process:
the NAF had, among other violations, claimed to have mailed the "award" to the wrong
address. The court in that case wrote that the courts should not "...turn a blind eye
to credit card industry practices that transgress the boundaries of due process."

So, yes, there are likely literally thousands of alleged debtors who have not received
so-called arbitration "awards" because the NAF deliberately sent them to the wrong
address, or did not send them at all.

My question is: Now that you have this information, what are you planning to do about
it?

On 9/06/07, Doug T wrote:
> Has anyone had problems with National Arbitration Forum not sending notice of the
> arbitration prior to the arbitration and/or not sending notice of the arbitration
> award? I have had two different people tell me that they never received any notice
> from NAF either before or after the arbitration. The only notice they had
arbitration
> even took place was a summons to ratify the award.
>
> These both happened in MO - Kramer and Frank is the attorney and NCO Protfolio
> management is the Debt collector