i have a couple of questions. If i have medical collections that were from Sentara hospital and they turned them over to sentara collections does validation still work since it is thier own in house collections? Also, if you are responsible for the debt and you send a validation letter can they take legal action against you? If I told the in house collection company that i would pay the debt if they took it off my report and had it in writing does it make it legally binding? They sent me a letter that was a release of liability form stating that when i paid the debt in full they would remove it from my cr. It was just typed on paper with no signiture or letter head so i requested a new one. This is what they sent me. This letter will confirm that upon receipt of the release of liability form we have requested you sign and have notorized and the full payment of the above referenced accounts, we will delete them from your credit bureau reports. I acknowledge that you may not have received notification of the accounts per our conversation. That letter was signed and it has Sentara printed on the top with thier address and telephone numbers. What should i do?
Even if the CA is a part of the hospital, if they represent themselves as a CA, they are covered by FDCPA and other requirements of a CA. You could therefore request validation if you felt you needed to, but it appears you can probably get the original billing invoices from the hospital anyway. If they are still actually part of the hospital billing, however, it is probably easier to get agreement for payment and removal of the negative TL. Make sure any insurance claims have been submitted, and are accounted for in the balance they are requesting payment for. Their letter should be sufficient to bind them. It appears to be an offer, that if you accept and meet your side of the agreement, they could be held to meet their side, or if they didn't, it would be easier for them to comply than to fight simply removing. The fact that they include the justification for removal is a good sign, since that bypasses the usual independent CA's BS argument that "the CRA woen't allow us to delete, we can only mark as settled or paid". Consumers aren't the only ones who make mistakes; so do hospitals and CAs, and they should in good faith correct them. Although it may not say how long their offer is good, if the amount is correct, you probably don't want to give them an excuse to retract it and send to a real CA. Send your complete payment, along with a letter indicating that this payment is in acceptance of their offer (include a copy of their offer letter), and that they should now remove their TL promptly, completely, and permanently. Your letter, accompanied by your payment, is your acceptance of their offer to delete for payment. Send it CRRR. Their attorney would not want to be in the position of arguing to a judge why they should not meet their obligations, so you should have no problem getting them to delete. Keep copies of everything permanently, including a copy of your check. Once accounts get into the collection area, record keeping on payments may be more haphazard, and sometimes paid accounts are sold by mistake. CYA. Check your credit reports in 30 days, and if the TL is not completely removed from all reports, notify them that they are in breach or their contract by failing to remove the TL.
You may need to check the release of liability to make sure it only covers liability for errors in billing to date. I.e.: If they later sell the paid account, and the TL reappears, the release should not be so broad as to preclude action against them for such future negligence.
I have two other collections that are not with an in house collection. I just found these when i bought my credit report yesterday. One has been sending the bill to an address that I never lived at and the other was being sent to an old address. They are only $330. and $195. I have asked both CA's if they would remove them from my credit report if i paid them and both said no. Should i send each of them a validation letter now?
Without validation how can you know what the bill is for, whether it is correct, and if you pay it, what you are paying for, so another CA doesn't try to collect again later? Are these medical bills also? If so, were they properly filed with your insurance? Have you contacted the original creditor, or do you need the creditor and account number information from the CA even to do that? Why was a bill being sent to an address you never lived at? Is it even your bill?
here's what happened. when my son was born in 2003 his father and I weren't married. The baby was on his fathers insurance and i had my own. Some of the baby's medical bills were filed on my insurance and denied. One was never refiled again with the correct insurance comapany, that bill is $330. One bill was filed with the right insurance company and it came back saying that it wasn't denied that the just needed a coordination of benefits, we got the paperwork for it, my fiance doesn't remember if he ever sent it back though, that one is for $1700. and the insurance company should have paid it. The other bill is for $195. that was filed with my insurance company and that was left over as member responsibility. After we were notified about the coordination of benefits I stopped getting bills. I had paid a lot of medical bills from his birth and thought that they had all been taken care of. I never heard another word from anyone that I owed anything until the other day when i bought my credit report which I buy every month or two. There were four things in collections. When I called the different CA's they were all sending he bills to the wrong addresses. One company was sending them to an old work address and calling there ( I quit working when my son was born). The other company was sending them to an address in PA that i never lived at and the other CA was sending them to an old address that i had lived at years before my son was even born. I knew that I put my address were I live now and had been living at when he was born on my registration form at the hospital. I called the hospital to try to obtain the original form that I filled out by hand and signed. They can't produce it. They sent me a computer generated printout that had a very old address on it and every department had different addresses listed. One department said that they showed in thier notes that someone had changed my address on one of the forms to that PA address that i had never lived at. I have no idea what the hell is going on or how it happened! I think that someone at the billing department at the hospital screwed up somehow so they did some sort of trace on me and pulled old addresses that I had lived at and put them on my forms. I have no idea. All I know is that I was getting my bills, then they stopped and all of the sudden they all have different and incorrect addresses for me. How do I dispute that?!? The address they have on 2 of those collections i lived at in the past. The address in PA was the parents house of an ex boyfriend that I had years and years ago. We never lived together and only shared one account, a CC to a furniture store, he co signed for me. How in the hell did the hospital get that address? and why would they do all this if the address that i gave them was correct? i am so confused!!!
Sorry that post was so long. Did it even make sense? It doesn't make sense to me. One more question. The bill for 1700. That is the in house collection for the hospital. They are the ones that said if i paid the debt that they would remove it but the insurance company was supposed to pay it. I had the claim refiled but i think that it's been to long so they will just deny it. Should I wait and see or just pay it and get it off the report?
Contact the insurance company and determine what has been filed and what has been paid. Get copies in writing. You should have EOBs for all paid claims. If a claim was filed, but held up for documentation or other problems, they may still pay it in good faith even if their stated time to file the original claim has passed. Don't just assume it won't be paid. Contact an administrator at the hospital. Let them know that their various departments appear to have screwed up your billing address and are mailing your bills to various incorrect addresses, including the addresses of unrelated strangers, in violation of HIPPA. Make clear that you provided your correct billing address, but different departments have not been using it. Their erroneous change of your billing address as the cause of this snafu is your leverage to demand the whole mess be corrected, any accounts sent to collection be recalled, and any negative tradelines be removed. Ask them to get all of these accounts straightened out, so that they can get paid, as there is insurance coverage. There is probably someone in some department (sometimes it is called "patient relations" or some such name) that fixes messes like this, but you may need to go to the top to get it in the right hands. Is the hospital "in network", under contract to the insurance company? If so, you can put pressure on them from the insurance company side.
Follow up on each contact, send letters to memorialize phone calls, insist on confirmation letters from every party that agrees to take a step.
Thanks for all your help. I do have a couple more questions for you though. I just remembered something that on of the guys from the collection agency said to me. He said "that was the doctor who assisted in your C-section". Isn't that a huge hippa violation? How do I prove it? Do i have a legal right to request the info the ca has on me? Also, should I send validation letters now? I have chosen not to send validation to the ca who gave me something in writing about removing from my cr. It's the other 2 ca's i'm worried about.
By all means send validation, since you may not even have copies of the bills you are trying to collect. You are in a better position, however, also working with the hospital directly to get them paid directly by your insurance. HIPPA may not give you a direct cause of action to sue the CA, but if the hospital, either by their own errors, or thru their agents the CAs, are causing your medical records to be sent to strangers, they may have an interest in getting the mess back under their direct control to avoid regulatory complaints for a mess they had a hand in creating.
In fact, thru the hospital administration, ask for ALL bills and billing parties who have claims related to your stay. They are the single point in the system that might even have this information. Make clear in each letter that it has become clear that billing address errors in their system have resulted in bills being sent to strangers, and insurance claims being improperly filed. You might even ask for ALL addresses to which bills or other communication associated with this stay have been sent. Ask them to buy their own rope.
while we are on this subject. I have a bill with a surgeon, the insurance denied so the surgeons office turned it over immediatley to a CA. well the CA sent the bill to my wife. we asked for validation and they sent copies of the bill in my name only to her again saying this is the validation you requested so pay up. her name is NOWHERE on it. got a catchy reply to the CA?
Why did the insurance deny? If they mis-submitted or mis-coded, or this physician just joined a group practice, and the insurance company denied thinking he was out of network, they might have denied in error. First deal with determining what the surgeon is due, based on any insurance contracts or agreements. The amount due to the surgeon, the amount due from you, and the amount due from insurance, all need to be resolved. Getting a bill from a CA, even if they validate, will not address any of these issues.
Ins denied as pre existing. surgeons office would not reduce bill even with me outa pocket. state ins commish investigated etc. bill is up to me. still doesn't answer ? as to wifes part.
Are you claiming HIPPA violation, or do you and your wife live at different addresses and replies to your requests are going to the other address?
