I received a letter from Merchants' Credit Guide, representing their client, NCO Portfolio Management demanding that I pay them $3,238.70 for a credit card that I paid off in 1997. When I called them, I was told that I have to prove that I paid it off.
It's been 8 years! The IRS doesn't require us to keep receipts for that long, so how can a private company and when does it end? How could the law allow for this?
After spending 5 hours looking through boxes for old statements and finding nothing to verify my claim, I did manage to find my old Quicken database on my computer. It shows that on 08/19/97 I paid American General $200 and on 08/28/1997 the remaining $1,630.75
It took an hour on the phone the next day to find that American General no longer exists and CheckFree (who I used with Quicken to make bill payments back then) no longer has records for me.
Another half hour on the phone with Wells Fargo and they were able to access archived statements for that time period and are sending them to me. Not sure if a bank statement is going to be proof enough, but it appears that I have no where else to turn.
Thank you fabulous people at Wells Fargo for being so nice and spending a half hour of your time for someone who hasn't even been a customer for over 7 years.
NCO, by the way, sent me a letter for the same thing back in 2000. I disputed it then and it is my belief that they left me alone until 8 years after the original activity so that I would be unable to easily prove payment.
Thanks to this site, I am no longer stressed out and know how to handle this. I would definitely be interested in a class action suit. I have health issues and I'm sure that the stress from this incident and the lack of sleep that it caused has not been good for me. Unless the government does something about this, I will carry the fear that every 5 years this will happen again with the interest compounding higher and higher.
How to you resolve something like this if the original company no longer exists? I personally believe that the whole business of third party debt collection and the practice of company A selling your loan to Company B is a burden to the consumer and we could be haunted for life for old bills that someone found at the dump.
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