collection agency fee and intrest...but I paid the creditor !

[bigcreditmess]

What is the name of your state?What is the name of your state? MD

OK heres the story...

My dh recieved a letter from a collection agency over a year ago about a medical bill they said we owed. We thought we had already taken care of it so we ignored it...well after a couple of letters from them , we called the doctors office ( Patient First ) and asked them if we owed anything. They said no...well we got more letters , called the collection agency and said we didnt owe it .

AFter a while we went back to Patient First for a flu shot and while I was there I had them check the whole familys recored ( I only checked mine and dh the first time ) well anyway , they found the bill that had not been paid. I said can I pay it , they said yes and I paid the bill in full to them.

This was over a year ago....we are still getting letters from the collection agency about this...Now they finally said we owe the fee ($25.00) for it .

well in Jan. 05 It said.... other : $25.00 nothing in the intrest part or principal part we just got our feb. statement aND IT SAID principal 0...other $25.00 and intrest $ 69.00.

Do I have to pay a fee and intrest to them even though I paid the original creditor ( Patient first ) over a year ago ?

Its on dhs credit report as a collection RE: PATIENT FIRST...but we dont owe patient first !


please help !!

how can we fight this or get it off his report.

 

[MominNJ]

Have the DR fix it

I would take these letters to the dr's office and ask them to fix it. If they received the money from you, they should have pulled it out of collections. It looks like they didn't follow up with that.

 

[jaytee716]

I would agree and suggest one more step. I would immediatly immediatly dispute the debt to the credit bureau (either by doing an online dispute, or in writing) and demand that the entire CA's trade line be deleted as the debt is not valid. If there is an entry from the Dr's office, I would dispute that too and demand that it be updated as such. This will do two things for you. Once the credit bureau gets your dispute, they will notify both the CA and the Dr's office that you are disputing the report. They will then have 30 days to prove that it is valid to the credit bureau. As long as the debt was not purchased by the CA, once the CA contacts the Dr's office for the validation, they will then be told that it has been paid, thus no proof to send to the credit bureau, and the trade line will be deleted. When the Dr's office is notified of the dispute from the credit bureau, they will then be forced to update the entry as paid in full, or remove the entire trade line.

I think that this would help speed the process along, as some places only update the credit bureau's quartarly, and being that there are two places involved, could take them time to get their act together. The credit bureau will then send you an updated credit report along with a letter telling you what was updated.

From my experence with collections, if we ran into a situation similar to yours in the agency that I worked for, we would not hold the consumer responsible for the interest or any fees. We would simply return the account to the client once we were notified that it was paid, as our clients paid us a fee if we collected a debt or not. I am not sure if you would be responsible for the fees if the CA purchased the debt from the Dr's office or not. If that is the case, then the Dr's office would send the money that you paid to the CA (since they purchased it) and you may then need to pay the interest and other fees.

Hope that helped.

 

[bigcreditmess]

Thank you

The doctors office gave me a letter stating I do not owe them any money my account bal. is zero.

On the Credit report it says the collection agancys name then says orig. creditor : Patient First , collection account $25.00 past due ( which is the CA fee)
and they have another one on my CR that says the same thing but the amount is 90.00 past due ( there fee and intrest ).They both also say installment as type ?

how do I find out if its bought or sold , just call the OC ?

thank you for all the help

 

[jaytee716]

You can call the OC and ask them. I assume that the account #'s listed is the Dr's office account #, and on the other trade line, the account # for the CA. I would still dispute and send along with the dispute, a copy of the paid letter from the OC.

 

[bigcreditmess]

actually the account number listed on the CR is the the CA account number not the doctors office account number . My receipts from Patient First have a different account number ( all the same ). Both of the listings on the CR are the CA account numbers ( and both are different account numbers ? ) , not the doctors account numbers.

Does that mean its the collection agency that is putting the info on for themselves ?