Happened in Georgia - Had charter spectrum internet in a rural college town and ended my contract with them paying my last bill on 8/9/18 and closing my account. My account balance has $0 when I look it up online.
I receive a FICO credit score hit of 72 points, I click on it and it says I have an account that was sent to collections. I keep up with all my bills, so I thought there was some sort of mistake. Reached out to the collection agency to see what happened and they notified me that charter has sent me to collections for failure to return equipment. I told them that I am able to take care of the balance, no problem but that I never received a notice from them or Charter with this statement. They opened up a dispute, and that is still pending but they said to take it up with Charter.
I called Charter billing and spoke with a rep that said that they emailed me the day after I closed my account with them which would've been 8/10/2018. I reviewed my email, which coincidentally has my final invoice/receipt showing paid and the account is at $0.00 (from 8/9/2018), among several other old receipts from paid statements leading up to my final one. But no notice of a statement, or unpaid balance on account, nothing. They said they sent a follow up email as well, searched for that and couldn't find it either.
The rep then said they've sent written notices to my parents home for the past two years, every month on the 9th. I reached out to my father who collects all my mail and gives it to me every few months I have seen him. He says he's never thrown away mail of mine and that he didn't receive any notices from Spectrum. I confirmed the mailing address and email address with the rep and they are both correct. Rep said that they never called me with a notice.
I told the Spectrum rep that I would like to dispute the aspect that I wasn't given a written/called notice. He said okay and that typically that just entails them sending out "another statement" to the address on file. It didn't actually sound like there is any resolution, or that it will do anything or matter.
I am wondering if I have a recourse against Spectrum with this, cause if I had gotten a written notice from them I would've taken care of it. I have no problem paying the statement, that's not my issue. My issue is that now my credit will be affected years due to me simply not being adequately or professionally notified of this. Is there anything I can do to fix this without my credit getting messed up for years to come? Thanks.
Submitted October 14, 2020 at 08:35PM by jr_hudgins https://ift.tt/2SUvmdd
