I had a routine operation in December 2016. I paid every bill that was sent to me (or so I thought). Unknown to me at this point, the hospital apparently had about $120 remaining, but to the best of my knowledge I never received a bill for that amount or smaller increments of that sum either. Eventually it gets sent to collections, and about 6-7 months later I start getting calls from a number I don't recognize so I send them to voicemail, they leave a 10 second message that contains nothing - no one talking, no audio, just a few seconds of silence and then a disconnect sound. Assuming the calls are spam I continue to ignore them, but they're persistent every single day so I google the number and this collection agency comes up. A bit of research leads me to conclude they are legit and work with my hospital so I call the hospital's billing department directly and ask them if there are any unpaid accounts in my name. They say yes, I owe them $60 so I go ahead and just pay it.
I think a few things are important to note here:
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I pay all of my bills via one account using my bank's BillPay. If it is a bill, it comes out of this account and 99.9% of the time it's going to be a check directly from my bank, not from me. This makes record-keeping on my end really easy and, in my opinion, irrefutable.
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I keep all sensitive paperwork, sometimes for years, before it goes into a shredder. When I can't find a bill in the shred-box, it's a pretty good indication that it doesn't exist anywhere else in the house.
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I use the hospital's online account pretty regularly, and at no point has this amount shown up in the billing section of my account with them.
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I definitely haven't received any medical bills for $60, or $120, or at all since I paid what I thought was the full amount to begin with.
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They have reported $60 to my credit report. After I paid the bank, the collector updated it to show paid with a $0 balance and the derogatory mark is still there of course. It is currently taking about 60 points off my score per a very recent credit report.
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At no point have I received a letter from the debt collector about this debt
When I complained to the hospital billing department that I had never received a bill, they offered to send me an itemized copy but I still have not received that (4+ weeks) so I complained to their corporate office, both about the debt collector and about their billing department, and was put in touch with one of the VP's assistance who has been acting as somewhat of a proxy between me and the debt collector - this has revealed some additional interesting discrepancies:
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The debt collector claims that the total amount originally owed was around $120, and claims I paid that amount down to $60 and then stopped, which is why it was reported to my credit.
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The debt collector also told them that they had never had any contact with me. They declined to comment on sending me a notice of debt collection.
Not sure how I would have paid a debt without having any contact with the collector, and I pointed this out to the VP assistant so she said she was going to get a copy of any letters or bills sent to me, but still have not received that (2+ weeks). In the meantime, I drafted a letter to the debt collector challenging the debt and sent it certified. I just received a letter back that says "the account is closed" and nothing else. The derogatory mark has been updated with a comment saying I wrongly contested the mark.
So I don't know what to do at this point. I obviously shot myself in the foot by paying the $60 so now I have no leverage to request a pay for delete. I'm thinking of drafting a letter to each of the CRA's to contest it. Any advice or feedback would be greatly appreciated.
Submitted March 27, 2018 at 09:42AM by brodie7838 https://ift.tt/2Gh2ELN
