AT&T Wireless account. While in California I opened an account with AT&T and completed the one year agreement period, subsequently cancelling. I recieved what I believed was the last billing and paid it in full. I then moved to Maryland a month later. I never received another billing, and had not provided AT&T with a change of address as I did not believe I had a business relationship with them any longer. I discovered, when beginning my credit repair, that a balance of $62.00 was listed. I wrote a validation letter to AT&T wireless and received a copy of a bill dated a month later showing charges incurred during my last billing period that were not billed with a letter advising these charges did not appear on the bill I paid as they had system problems at the time. They advised my credit report would only be updated to reflect a "paid charge off" when the bill was paid and would not receive any other notation. What is ironic, is I currently have an AT&T wireless account under a new plan that is reported as current with zero balance - I found this amusing as they seem not to have noticed I owed them money when they opened the new account. I do intend to pay this, it is past the SOL, but am curious if a "paid charge off" status is even worth the effort. Will it have the same value on my credit score as a regular charge off? My Experian report has updated in the last two days and dropped a point as AT&T changed the reporting to a $62.00 balance with no status.
It will have the same effect. That is why it is better never to pay them a crying dime once they send it to collections. You have nothing whatever to gain and can only lose by paying. Better to fight them for the debt and deletion of the account charge off.
Don't pay - you will just re-age the account to current and then suffer the 7years from that point on. Also, the SOL has expired, they can't really touch you if you use that as your absolute defense. Just dispute w/ the CRAs to get it removed. Also, their validation sounds incomplete..
Hal, I agree with the others. I have the same scenario with NCO. They claim I never made good on a $19 check that bounced with Pizza Hut in 1996. (which I am almost sure I did) They started reporting it on my cr March of this year. They too said that they will not delete the entry if I paid it but will only report it as "Paid". I asked the woman what motivation would be for me to pay if she was going to report a paid collection for the next seven years. I told her that I would not pay and be free of it in two years. She replied that they may proceed to sue me. My question is to you guys is in my state the statute of limitation on returned checks is three years (but reports for the full seven) what can I do to get this removed? I had this conversation with them about two weeks ago. She did not say she was going to sue but did say they could and gave me the breakdown of how this $19 check would cost me over $200 after a lawsuit. I do think that she was out of bounds with her reply, but how would I prove it and should I even bother? Mahalo, PuuOoPaul
Yes, she is clearly out of bounds. Go to the FTC website and check over the opinions of the FTC on threats of lawsuit and it will clearly tell you that what she did was against the FDCPA. Proving it might be another matter. You may have to call her up while recording the conversation and acting like you are scared out of your pants, get her to say the same thing on the tape recorder. If you can get her to do that on the tape recorder, then I would ask her to send you a letter stating what she just said to you in person. If she is stupid enough to do that, you can probably hang her from the yard-arm at high noon.
