I moved from New Hampshire to New York in January of 2008 when my wife and I divorced. She left right after I did (February 2008) and moved back West. I just received a collection letter from a collection agency at my new address for $200 originally owed to Verizon. I seems she never shut off the phone and they must have been looking for me for a year and a half. I ran my credit report with freetriplescore.com to see how bad it looked but I don't see any record for the collection agency. However...I do see the Verizon New England chargeoff for $200. And...When I pulled the report I noticed there is ANOTHER Verizon chargeoff for my service here in NY! I started my NY account last year in January but closed it this year in April when I switched to Cablevision's Phone service. I received my final bill in May of this year but didn't pay until June. It was not excessively late (1 month), and I never got any threatening final notice or anything like that but it is listed as a paid chargeoff for $20. I guess when you close an account and take over a month to pay they assume you skipped town. So as far as I can tell, I am dealing with trying to fix chargeoffs on my credit report--not collections (since the collection agency thing didn't report yet). I did some reading and have a plan which, according to the primer, I'm posting for critique. 1) Send a copy of the collection letter back to them with a debt verification letter just to try to cut them off from pursuing that further and possibly reporting to the bureaus. I read that when you verify, they often kick it back to the original creditor. 2) Send a certified mail dispute letter to equifax, experian and transunion for both the Verizon NH and Verizon NY chargeoffs. 3) If they dont come back verified, they will come off the reports. 4) If they are verified deal with Verizon (thats gonna be fun) 1-Does that plan sound ok? 2-How exactly does Verizon verify to the credit bureus that the bills are legit (the NH one is legitimate but the NY one I feel, is not--I never got a letter that it was in threat of being charged off and it is paid in full) ? 3-What do I do if they come back verified to remove them? I am more than willing to pay the $200 but I don't know if I should talk to the collection agency or verizon and how do I assure that they remove it. As for the NY chargeoff--I don't have anything to pay, I just want it removed but since it was paid I have no leverage. Help?
