Hello all! I am a newbie and trying to figure out how to clean up my credit. For the first time today, I answered a call from a CA regarding a medical bill I owed. I told them to refer the bill back to the original creditor and they told me they couldn't do that. I didn't know where to take the conversation from there, so I just hung up. I immediately checked my credit report and discovered that this has been reported as a delinquency on my credit since 2/22/10. The information was provided by Collection Associates, but it does provide the name of the the original creditor as Medical/name of facility. Next, I call the facility to try and find out who owned the debt. Well, I never got that far because the lady told me I could just pay her if I wanted which led me to believe that the facility still owned the debt. Well, I jumped at the chance and just payed over the phone. She said she will mail me the receipt. So now I'm unsure where to go from here. The bill is paid, but the item is still on my credit report. How do I get the CA to REMOVE the item completely from my report? Will a simple dispute with the credit reporting agencies take care of it, or will I need to send a letter directly to them requesting they remove the debt/delinquency? Any help you guys can provide will be greatly appreciated.
Correction: The CA is reporting as derogatory not delinquent as I stated earlier, if that makes a difference.
You took her up on the offer too fast. Medical debts are often "assigned" to a CA for collection, which is why you have a collection on your credit reports. However, as you found out, the OC still owns the debt. Before you paid the OC, you should have requested that the OC pull your account from collections. The CA won't do it for you if you ask (they get paid if they collect so they have no incentive to do so), but often the OC will for medical-related debts. I would call the medical facility back first to see if they can still provide any assistance to pull the debt back from collections since you have fully cooperated and paid up.
Dang it! This totally blows. I just called them back and they said no they can't do it. They can just take the payment and send it to the collection agency, then the collection agency will post a zero balance to my account. Then says "well at least it will reflect paid on your account." I wish she would have said this the first time I talked to her. Yeah, but um I still have this derogatory credit from an collections account. I don't think I helped myself AT ALL. Do I have any leverage at this point?
Sorry - your leverage skipped town when you paid in full. The fact that it will report as paid certainly looks better on your credit reports to potential lenders, but the truth is a "paid" collection is essentially just as damaging to your credit score as an "unpaid" collection. Both are negative marks. Try to get a supervisor on the line or someone who has the authority to make a call about your situation on the spot. It sounds like you've been working with a real schmo that's not all too interested in doing what's best for you too.
Well, jumping at the chance to pull one over on the CA is where you went wrong. Paying by phone is also a big mistake. You can't control who gets the money. The proper way would have been to take enough cash with you and go directly to the hospital and pay there, getting a receipt on their statement. If they won't take the cash then write the hospital a check and put the hospital's name on the check and nobody else's name. Then if they want to pay the debt collector that is their problem, not yours. Only by paying directly to the creditor in cash or by check can you be certain about who gets the money. A check is better than paying in cash however. If the hospital don't pay the debt collector then another problem may arise when the debt collector comes wanting his money. You can always deal with that pretty easily unless you just ignore the CA as would seem to be the proper way to do because you don't have any contract with the debt collector (or so you believe) and the debt collector certainly didn't do anything for you. What you have to do is respond with a letter stating that you paid your debt in full at the hospital and if the hospital has some contractual obligation to pay the debt collector then it is the hospital who needs to pay the debt collector they hired.
