I have a medical bill that went to collection. It also was reported to the credit agencies. I called the collection agency to pay this debt off and the supervisor refused to take my payment, until I discussed my intentions with him, on another medical bill that is not related to the bill I want to pay off. Is this practice allowed to be done? How do I get passed this so I can resolve the one debt now? I told him I would discuss the other matter on a separate phone call, can we please take care of this one now. Thank You, Lee
I guess stupidity isn't against the law, these people are amazing, aren't they? If you want to pay this off, don't even bother calling them, just send them a check. That will stop any and all collection activity on the account. If not, sue them for an FDCPA violation and send them a coupon for a free cat scan.
Uh, yes, obviously their head is somewhere it doesn't belong. This is a typical collection activity, pay it no mind. They love to combine several debts into one, usually when one is beyond the SOL. Check the SOL on the one they don't want to talk about, if this is zombie debt, there goes FDCPA violation number two. The date of default usually starts when you miss a payment. I'm used to credit card cases, but the default law is usually the same. Your state statutes will tell you what the SOL is. Be advised that medical bill cases are harder to win. It's the philosophy of the case that counts......we saved your sorry butt and you stiffed us? Come on.
The one I want to pay is on my credit report and I want to show it paid to get my score back up. That one negative took it from 730 to 660. The other one is a hospital bill, which I intend to pay eventually, but from what I understand, the hospital does not report anything to the credit agencies. Could the collection agency decide to report the hospital bill to my credit report, since I pissed him off?
If you decide to send payment on the debt that is reporting without having a mutual agreement with them beforehand, make sure you pay via a paper instrument (money order) and write the full account number on it and include a disclaimer that the payment cannot be applied towards any other debt/account....CYA thoroughly! Note: an accord and satisfaction offer might do the trick too. One more idea: if the non-reporting debt is past SOL, settle it for peanuts, just to prevent them from turning the debt over to another CA and possibly having that CA start reporting that debt, and lowering your score further. Just an ounce of prevention... Hope this helps...
Remember that paying it off isn't going to necessarily improve your credit scores. A "paid" collection is just as damaging as an "unpaid" collection. Also, the CA could certainly report the medical collection to the CRAs as well.
You could be right. But maybe it was a coincidence, I did have another medical collection on my report last year and my score dropped. Once I paid it off my score jumped up 40 points.
It wasn't the fact the you paid it off that improved your credit scores, unless the account was removed completely from your credit reports. Some other change in your credit profile likely had a positive impact on your scores at the same time.
