I’ve only ever had student debt so hopefully this isn’t a stupid question, but please let me know if I’m overthinking it!
June 3rd I moved out of my apartment to work overseas for a couple months. We moved out after-hours, so the employee at the leasing office told us we could leave the keys in the apartment, send them an email saying we were out, and pay the final pro-rated rent online. Apparently she was wrong, but we had no idea until the next week when we got late fees for the remainder of the month’s rent. On the phone they tried to charge us for extra days of rent, water, trash, etc. and then ‘administrative fees’ for moving out incorrectly (read: doing as we were told). When I told her I wasn’t paying rent for days we did not live there, she threatened me with additional ‘cleaning fees’, etc totaling around $375 and eventually hung up on me. I found out a few days later that they kept my deposit, but I had too much going on to argue to get it back - had to leave the country. Didn’t hear anything else and assumed her little power trip was just empty threats.
Fast forward to this morning, I get a call from Procollect about a ~$250 debt I owe the apartment building. They don’t actually own the debt - my apartment hired them 7/28 to collect on their behalf & I have until 8/28 to either pay or get the apartment to say I don’t owe it. “Otherwise, it will be reported on your credit September 1st”. But they also said it was already on my credit report, so if I do pay it will only change to “paid”, not removed. They also tried to get my SSN, then said they already had it when I wouldn’t give it over the phone? And they ended the call with “I’ll make a note that you refused to pay today” when I said I needed to contact the apartment and get back to them. Hopefully that doesn’t hurt me…
I’ve been looking online to find the best solution since I doubt the apartment will be reasonable after the way they treated us the entire lease term. I read this type of debt stays on your credit report for 7 years regardless of whether you pay, and some places say paying it is worse for your credit & you should get a credit attorney? I don’t know the first place to look for a non-scammy collections attorney & not sure if the $250 debt would even be worth that. I just don’t want this to affect my credit or my chances of buying a house in the next few years.
Submitted August 13, 2021 at 11:47AM by awkwardandalkaline https://ift.tt/3g3FVXp
