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Credit card debt collection

bitsaboutmoney.com

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Re: Credit card debt collection

#24
post #11

Off topic: I've ignored any medical bills I thought were unfair for 12+ years. It's probably over $10k in bills altogether. It's never shown up on my credit reports though (I check often and bought a house last year). So your results may vary. In the mean time I just throw out the debt collector bills as I get them.

I've done the same, with the same results, because I've rarely come across a medical bill that is actually correct.

I'll call the provider once and explain what's wrong with the bill. Either they fix it, or I ignore them completely after that. Their bills go straight to the trash unopened.

Frequently as soon as you explain they need to fix something they just completely drop the bill for the same reasons as in this article: It's simply not worth their trouble to bill accurately, and they don't have the ability to do so. (And I'm talking about the provider here, not a debt collector.)

I've never once had a provider actually fix the bill, the closest I've gotten (just once so far) is a "courtesy credit" to make the bill what I told them it should be, and I paid that one.

All the others didn't fix the bill, so I didn't pay them.

Re: Credit card debt collection

#25
> The former advocate in me will observe that the single most effective method for resolving debts is carefully sending a series of letters invoking one’s rights under the FDCPA (and other legislation)

Can we get a summary of which letters / rights to invoke?

Re: Credit card debt collection

#26
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are my hero

[flagged]

When they agreed to the service 12+ years ago, were they shown the costs? Would you say their purchase was fully informed? Hell for all we know it was an ER visit and they had absolutely no say in the matter.

Re: Credit card debt collection

#28
There's a point in this article where Patrick suggests you Google "litigious debtor scrub" to confirm a point he's making, and when you get to that point --- not before --- I highly recommend doing the search and reading some of the links, because they're pretty funny.

Re: Credit card debt collection

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What should I do when a debt collector contacts me? Weep, because it will now be a good 5-6 years minimum before you can buy a house. Or, rejoice, because you didn't have a down payment anyway.

You can file a dispute[0] about items with credit reporting services. The reporter has a time window to reply with supporting evidence. If they don't, you win the dispute by default. If they do, you can dispute it again. I had a completely BS negative mark on my credit report[1]. I ran that process in a loop (maybe 3-4 iterations IIRC) until the reporter was either bored with it, annoyed by the paperwork, or on vacat…

>I eventually had to involve my senator

You say that the way a teacher might say "I'm going to have to involve your parents". How does one get a senator involved in a payment dispute?

Re: Credit card debt collection

#30

What's the waste of the software industry?

Burnt out developers? Start ups that could have been viable small/medium business but were scaled to death?

Also businesses that could have been profitable, but failed due to being out competed by businesses that secured 10X the venture capital and sold things at unsustainable prices for years.
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