Yesterday, a credit collections agency called my parents home phone and my Grandmothers home phone (not sure how they would get that information). I will get to this, but it is important to note, it turns out I do owe a high interest loan company money that I did not pay the full balance of, and given the high interest rate it is now about $2,500.
They were somewhat threatening in the phone calls, saying that if I didn't respond within an hour I would be served papers for a court case.
Right off the bat, there were red flags:
- The company that they called from does not exist on the internet
- The phone numbers they called from as well as the phone number they said to call do not show up in any google search.
I called the number they gave today, and they said I owe this amount of money and if I don't pay they will take me to court for intention to defraud a bank by taking a lone with the intention of not paying them back. (I think this is a big stretch because I made a ton of payments on this, before moving to a new house and I didn't notice that they stopped pulling money from my account every other week to pay back the loan. I had a rough year or two and didn't take my credit and loan obligations very seriously.
So I call the company and they want me to confirm the last 4 digits of my social security company before they would tell me anything. They told me the first 6 digits so I figured they already had my information. I asked them how I could verify that they were a legitimate business, since they didn't even tell me anything about what I owed until I gave them that information.
After giving the last 4 digits, the woman told me the collections was from a company that I did take a loan from. I told her I would call her back once I looked at my credit report. I saw that there was a collection on my report from Ad Astra as of 2/1/2022. The company name they gave me was United Firm. No record of this anywhere on the internet.
When I called back and asked them to send me some sort of documentation, the woman said they can't do that. When I asked why they don't have a website, she gave me some convoluted response and said they can't have one based on the nature of their business (red flag).
I have since cleaned up my finances, and wanted this to over with so I asked what I could pay to have this taken care of. Initially it was $2,000 and they offered a payment plan. I said I could pay $1,500 today and she said that wasn't enough. She offered dual payments as another option. I wanted to take care of it and said the most I can possibly pay is $1700. She said she had to check with her supervisor, and then after 30 seconds she said they authorized it.
I said I wanted some sort of documentation from them that showed an agreement where I would pay the amount and they would contact the credit agencies and say the debt was paid. She said that department was out for the day, and that they could send me something in the morning and I could pay then.
After thinking about all of this, I have some questions. They had my parents address, yet didn't send any letter. They also had my email address but didn't send any emails. When I asked about that, she said the previous owner of the debt had already done that, so they didn't have to. She said if they sent me an itemized summary of the amount owed, they would have to take me to court. That seems crazy for a legitimate business.
It is also a red flag that the name of their agency is different from the collection company that actually does own my debt based on my credit report. Ad Astra has a website and is a legitimate business.
Is it possible a fraudulent company could access a legitimate collection and pretend that they own it and try to get me to pay them? Everything about this feels off. The only reason I believed them is because they knew the name and amount of a real debt.
They didn't even have my cell phone number. The two numbers they called were landlines registered to my parents and grandmother that could be accessed via a search on Whitepages.
I would really appreciate advice on this. Sorry the post got so lengthy, I just wanted to make sure I stated everything as accurately as possible.
Submitted February 24, 2022 at 10:50PM by Sofosconsulting https://ift.tt/8DPq2Ff
