Respond to a formal complaint a collection partner has filed about your conduct on a case. Debitura reviews the partner's filing first and only tells you about it if it accepts the complaint for investigation; you then have 10 days to give your side before Debitura decides.
How you're notified
You won't know about a complaint until Debitura has reviewed it and decided to open an investigation - a complaint Debitura declines at that first review never reaches you.
Once Debitura accepts it, your office email and all Admin users on your account receive a "response needed" email with the complaint reference, category, the 10-day deadline, the partner's name, and any note Debitura added. The same recipients get a reminder 3 days before the deadline, and the final outcome once it is decided. There is no per-user assignment on your side, so these always go to the office email and Admin users, not to one specific person.
A "Respond to complaint C-YYYY-NNNNNN" task also appears on your Tasks page (under "All Types") and on the case itself, due 3 days before your response deadline. It clears automatically once you've responded or Debitura has resolved the complaint.
Respond to the complaint
Open the complaint. Go to Complaints in the profile menu and select the "Filed against me" tab, or use the "View Complaint" action on the task. Anyone on your account - Admin or User - can open and respond to it; there is no extra permission needed beyond normal portal access. The page shows the partner's filing - category, related cases, their description, desired outcome and any documentation - plus a note from Debitura if one was added when the complaint was accepted.
Write your response. While the complaint shows "Needs Response," use the response form: up to 10,000 characters of text, plus documents of up to 25 MB each.
Submit. You can only submit once, and no more files can be added afterward. The complaint moves to "Under Review," and you will see a confirmation that your response was submitted, with Debitura's next steps: it reviews your response and documentation, then shares its decision with you and the partner.
If you miss the 10-day deadline, your response is still accepted for as long as Debitura has not yet resolved the complaint without one - the deadline is when Debitura becomes free to decide without you, not a hard cutoff on being heard.
The decision
Once resolved, the page's decision banner names the outcome and the decision date: "{Severity} violation" if the complaint is upheld with Minor, Medium or Severe severity, or "Complaint dismissed" / "Outcome: {Severity}" if there is no adverse finding against you. ("Complaint withdrawn" also exists in the banner logic as a legacy label - no current action produces it.) Below the banner sit Debitura's assessment, the outcome and action it recorded, your own response and documentation, and a scope note confirming the decision only covers platform remedies, not whether the debt is owed or any invoice is valid.
You'll see the same severity word the partner would see for a complaint you filed against them, but never a penalty-point figure - there is no score for a partner-filed complaint to affect on your side.
Edge cases
If your account is blocked from submitting new cases, that does not affect your ability to view or respond to a complaint filed about you - complaint access stays open on both sides regardless of blocks.
Related reading
For the client-initiated side of complaints and what filing looks like: Clients: How complaints work
For the shared lifecycle, categories and severity model behind every complaint: Complaint management: how complaints are handled in Debitura