According to Nicor, my gas company, I owe them $1740. Since we've gone 2 Illinois winters now without gas, most of that has got to be late charges and other fees. I tried to negotiate with them today (moving from apartment to new house this week) and they said it was in collections with NCO Financial and told me to negotiate with them. I looked them up online and they're awful! What should I do? I'm a little afraid to call them. Should I try a lawyer like Lexington Law to negotiate for me? L.L. wants $10 to run my credit and $99 to negotiate for me. I don't have $99 to spare. Is there a cheaper alternative? Is there anything that can be done? The bill is legitimate - we couldn't afford our gas bills and got behind. Is it possible to get NCO to remove the late charges and let me just pay what the bills were? Is it possible to negotiate down the amount even more than that? Nicor won't turn our gas on in the new house until it's paid and we're drowning in debt. Help! Nicor said our last bill went out in June of 2009, so we're nowhere near the statute of limitations. Thanks for any advice you have to offer!
You'll have to deal directly with NCO if you want to clear this up, but don't be scared. I would try handling this on your own first before paying someone else to negotiate for you. Armed with a little knowledge and persistence, you should be fine. And yes, you may be able to convince them to remove late charges and other fees in return paying the bills in full. Of course, it will all depend on how the negotiations go and what it is they believe you can really afford. Also, there's no reason to even call them unless you're just dying to do so in order to move things along a bit faster. It's better to keep all your correspondence via mail CMRRR anyway. Have you pulled your credit reports to see how NCO is reporting this? I'm assuming you haven't received anything from NCO to this point either?
Generally utility companies do not do settlements on accounts so I doubt Nicor would be offering any settlements. It seems you want to get services back on, feel free to call them, I'd definitely record all phone calls. The faster the better you can pay off the bill perhaps six or less payments. You'd have to discuss that with NCO. You are well within your rights to request VOD if you want to see if there were late charges added to the account.
