Medical Collections

Discussion in 'Credit Talk' started by hardiek, Oct 19, 2014.

  1. hardiek

    hardiek New Member

    I have 2 medical collections. One is for $50 and one is for $399. I have money to pay both, but want them removed permanently from my credit (1 of the 2 is not even mine, but Experian will not delete it even after I disputed as not mine).

    Any ideas how I should handle them? Thanks.

    Kevin
     
  2. credit guy

    credit guy Member

    medical collections should be easy to get off with the right kind of research.
     
  3. jam237

    jam237 Well-Known Member

    No one can make sweeping generalizations about how easy or hard a specific debt will be to remove.

    The question for the OP is how is the one "not mine"?

    If you dispute it as "not mine", the data furnisher only needs to provide TWO of FOUR pieces of information; your name, address, DOB, or SSN. If they have any 2 of those, they can survive a simple "NOT MINE" dispute.

    If the debt is "not mine" and survives a simple "not mine" dispute, you need to dispute it again, with a more specific "not mine" reason. The model for this is Johnson v. MBNA.

    MBNA verified that the former Ms. Johnson was the owner of the account, which was her ex husband's account, which she was only an authorized user. She disputed it as NOT MINE, EX-HUSBAND'S ACCOUNT, ONLY AN AUTHORIZED USER. MBNA verified that the account was her's even though they didn't have her SSN or DoB, the courts said that they needed to do a more conclusive investigation than just typing the account number, seeing her name and address, and saying "YEP, IT'S HERS!"
     
  4. CrisAdams

    CrisAdams New Member

    It takes 7 years for collection accounts to fall off of your credit report. The Fair Isaac Corporation, the company whose credit score is most widely used by lenders, announced in August that it would start calculating scores differently. Its new FICO 9 model weighs medical debt in collections less than it does other types of debt, and does not consider accounts already paid in full. Although, your collections may still appear on your credit report, your score will not suffer as much & could go up by as much as 25 points.

    Claiming that an unpaid medical bill is not your responsibility is a more difficult case to make to a credit bureau. You are far better served communicating with the provider and/or collections agency as mentioned earlier. The credit bureaus want to display accurate factual data. That is very hard to determine when the consumer says one thing and the reporting entity another.
     
  5. jam237

    jam237 Well-Known Member

    Re: the account that you believe is not yours. It is best to discuss the error with the data furnisher.

    To survive a NOT MINE dispute, a data furnisher only needs to provide two of four things... name, address, dob, ssn...

    They can get most of that information from the CRAs in the process of 'skip tracing'...
     

Share This Page