A couple of months ago I received a phone call from a collector, NCO Financial, about a debt that I owed SunTrust Bank. I was unaware of this debt, as SunTrust had not contacted me. As time went on, they continued to call and began harassing me over the phone, still with no paper documentation of the debt I owed. Finally, after a while, I agreed to pay the debt and set up a date to pay by.
As I began doing some background checking on NCO and their collecting habits, I noticed that they are not a member of the Better Business Bureau and that the BBB has had multiple complaints against NCO. I then called SunTrust to take care of the debt with them and took a statement that NCO had finally sent me. SunTrust was shocked to see this letter for several reasons, the largest being that SunTrust does not farm out its collections to NCO but uses an in-house collector. Secondly, they had not even attempted to collect the debt, as it was a small amount of money (less than $100.00). I was able to pay the debt to the creditor with no hassle.
Be careful of all collection letters that come from NCO Financial Systems. Check with the creditor and make sure that NCO is their third party collection agency. I would have paid NCO, and that money would never have been credited to the actual debt. The scary part is figuring out how they obtained this information, as it was never turned over to collections and not on my credit report.
My suggestion to anyone who gets a call or letter from NCO is to double check with the creditor and, if possible, settle up with the creditor and avoid any and all contact with NCO Financial Systems.
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