I needed some help and was hoping someone could offer some advice. I'm 22 and I don't know what to do. My previous electricity company sent me to collections for a bill of 150 dollars... I had moved out of a house in Feb and my roommates were taking care of the bill (even though it was still in my name). Right before they transferred the account to their name in April they paid the bill via phone but the electric company has said the customer service rep made a mistake by taking the wrong bank account/routing number, resulting in the payment not going through. The electric company sent notifications by mail to the physical location but of course, since I moved out I was no longer there so I never received anything. Also, they never attempted to email or contact me. I received a collection letter in the beginning of July. I sent the CA a letter asking them to validate the debt. The CA is NCO Financial. I am not sure whether I should go through the validation route or to pay the original creditor (electricity company) and have them try to get involved in fixing this. When I called earlier the rep told me to just pay the collection agency but when my roommate called they told him he can pay. What should I do? Please help, I'd appreciate it so much.
Utilities seem to be a bit different than other types of businesses for some reason. I've paid the gas company when they had turned the bill over to NCO and had no problem. NCO tried to collect after I had paid the bill to the gas company and I just told them I wasn't going to pay them anything and never heard from them again. The problem they have is that they can't validate the debt once you paid the utility and they can't attempt to collect unless they can validate. I'd just pay the utility in cash and tell NCO you refuse to pay the debt. Of course, they might not ever contact you again either since they can't validate a debt you don't owe. Too bad that don't work with other types of debt.
Thanks for letting me know! Thats what I figured but wanted a second opinion. Plus, this whole situation arose because the electric company made a mistake (they wrote down my roommate's account number/routing number wrong when he called in). Hopefully I will get it figured out on Monday. Thanks again Mr. Bauer.
