Hi I was referred here from another discussion board here because I was told all the "Experts" are here. Apologies for the long post but here's the story... I moved to a different state in Jaunuary and closed all my accounts at the apartment I was moving out of and thought I had settled them satisfactorily. Then I received a bill from one of my utilities in June, which I promptly paid. I check my credit reports regularly and noticed yesterday that that utility has sent my account to collections. On the credit report, past due, amount owed are all $0. So, I called the utility asking what was up. The lady said I owed them 40 cents from my last bill and they sent me a "final bill". I never received that bill. I asked her why I never received a reminder from them, she said that wasn't their policy and everything was sent to collections after the "final bill". My account was sent to collections back in April. But I have never received any note from the agency. I only noticed the problem when I was reviewing my report. And I pulled the report on 10/17 and the item doesn't appear there but it does appear on the report I pulled on 10/25. So, I asked the lady to give me the name of credit agency so I could follow-up and ask why I never received a notice in 6 months and why my account was in collections already? And she said they don't have to give out that info and that information wasn't on my account anyway. They don't know who they sent the account to be collected! I called TransUnion and have placed a dispute. Since there was no collection to fight against, I contacted the utility and paid the darn 40cents to get my account settled. For 6 years, I have not made one payment late, never missed a payment and had pristine credit history for 22 accounts. And now this stupid episode has dented my account, and for all of 40 cents. Is there anything I can do to have it removed from the credit report besides the dispute? TIA!
Did you in fact provide them a new current address for them to send the final bill? Did they in fact send you your final bill to that address? If it is their "policy" to send final bills to collections instead of mailing them to the customer so they could have received timely payment, resulting in the customer's credit being trashed, then this is an issue to file a complaint with your state public utility commission or other regulatory agency, and with any TV or newspaper media consumer reporter in your area. It is not a normal ethical business practice, and probably an unfair trade practice under your state's consumer protection law, to routinely trash your customer's credit simply because they are terminating your services. In effect, they are reporting erroneous negative information if they routinely send all final bills to collection, ensuring that payment will not be made timely due to their own billing practices, and therefore will generate a negative mark on the ex-customer's credit. On revolving credit accounts, this would probably run afoul of the FCBA. If this is the case, it would also be appropriate to file complaints with your state AG and FTC.
Hi and welcome! I have a few thoughts on this. The first is that your collection should fall off with no problem since no one seems to know what is going on. On your credit report there should be an address for you to contact the the entity that placed it on your credit. If it was the utility company and they verify it for whatever reason, since it is 40 cents, you should be able to send a goodwill letter to the company and get it removed from your report. You can also try calling and getting someone who is more helpful; sometimes you have to call a few people to get someone who is happy to help. Someone is bound to have a sense of humor about the absurdity of placing that amount on someone's credit report. If that doesn't work, nothing like a little bad publicity to get them to snap to. After it is removed, your score will jump back up and be like new within a few months, so no worries. The scores seem to go up and down at a whim. I've noticed weird crap that for put on my report then disappeared after I disputed and it barely dinged me. I understand the intial flip out, but it'll be ok. Keep us posted.
It is not the job of the lady you talked to to act rationally on a 40 cent debt, but there are others whose job it is to see that small problems don't become big ones. Those people are usually in management, customer relations, regulatory relations, advertising, etc. and it is their job to make sure the company does not look stupid before their next tariff increase hearing. You can often reach them effectively thru the executive offices, or thru complaints thru BBB, state regulators, or media.
