I received a letter from Allied Interstate in June (the letter was dated June 17) requesting payment for a debt with SBC-Kansas for dsl internet service. We were under contract with SBC for two years but because of a job change were forced to move away from their coverage area and canceled the service. The contract for the dsl said we had to pay them and early termination fee.
The total amount of the debt was $455.91. I made alot of calls to Allied Interstate in order to find out which office of theirs was responsible for collecting the debt. Finally by searching the Internet located on of their Vice Presidents by the name of Jim Pond (818) 575-5400 or (614) 865-2906 and spoke to his office assitant Amber.
She located one the correct office for me and I contacted them and spoke to Veria (her number has not been disconnected) all this time people screamed and yelled and threatened me that they were going to report me to the Credit Agencies. My wife and I were working on buying a house at the time so it was a scary threat. I actually kept telling them I wanted to pay the debt because I owed it but I wanted to negotiate the amount. They did not seem to want to negotiate.
Well when I finally spoke to Veria we negotiated the debt down to $297.00 dollars and I made 4 payments of $74.25 on 6/30,7/30,8/26 and 9/30 of 2005 to payoff the debt. After the last payment my wife called to make sure that the debt was satified and that they would not be debiting my account anymore. Angelica informed my wife that the debt was satisfied and that they did not have any more debits to our account scheduled.
Well we bought out house and everything was fine until Monday 05/22 when I received another letter from Allied Interstate dated 05/17 attempting to collect the rest of the debt totalling $158.91. I called them and asked immediatly to speak to a manager but of course the collector attempted to intimidate me in order to collect the money. I don't intimidate easily and ended up with the collector hanging up. I went on playing this game for an hour or so then I finally was able to speak to a manager named Tim - . I explained the situation to him and he indicated that he would remove it from the system.
Well this morning I received a notice from my Credit Monitoring Service that this debt had been reported as an open account (not a collection item) to the Equifax even when the letter I received earlier in the week gave me the standard 30 days to reply.
I started doing more research on them and found this website as well as http://www.mywesterncapital.com/news_allied.html
I called western capital and spoke to Robert - and we called interstate back and recorded to call you can access the recording at the website listed above.
The collectors were a much easier to deal with this time because they realized that someone else was listening in and the call was being recorded. However the Collection Agent Nicole does get somewhat out of hand.
The whole time Nichole attempts to push the responsiblity for the Credit Reporting off on the Original Creditor but I informed her that I hold her company responsible for the report because they did not handle the closing of the original collection account correctly.
I finally spoke to Tim - again and Robert also talked to him and he promised to have a Debt Satisfaction letter sent to me within 24 hours. Now I am what is known as A Tenatious SOB so one way or another I will get the letter if I have to call Tim and remind him everyday.
Hope this helps anyone else that is dealing with these people.
Brian
Strasburg, Missouri
U.S.A.
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