A debt collector is required to respond to your request for verification if you provide it to the collector within 30 days of the date you receive the validation notice. This time period is commonly known as the “validation period.”

Untimely requests for verification are sometimes furnished both before and after the validation period.

A debt collector does not have to respond to your request for verification if you send it after this 30-day period. A debt collector is not required to respond to your written request for verification if you sent the request before the debt collector has sent the validation notice. One example of this is if you discover that a debt collector has reported a debt to a consumer reporting agency (CRA) but has not yet sent a validation notice. Because the validation period begins only after the consumer's receipt of the validation notice, verification requests submitted prior to that time are not binding.