Ok, this questionable company IS an actual collection agency. However, I have no outstanding collections. Yea, I may forget to return my movies on time occasionally, (not rewound, no less!) but no actual collections at this time in my life. I did have one, about 5 years ago, through no fault of my own. Yea right, you say?
Well, when I moved to a new city and gave the utility company my new address to forward any final bills to, the customer service rep mistakenly selected the wrong city in her drop down menu (I found out later when iquiring about this mystery debt) so I never received the final bill of a meesly $40, which about doubled due to the collection fees. Normally, I would wonder where a final bill was when it didn't show up the next month, but that particular month, I had just moved, signed my older child up for a new school and new daycare, and have a baby, so the furthest thing from my mind was any final bills for a few days of living at an old residence in a different city!
Because they had the wrong city, I never received any notice that this debt was outstanding, nor that it had gone to collections! I finally found out about it when obtaining a car loan from my bank a year later, and immediately drove down to the nearest office of this particular collection company, Equifax I think it was at the time. Case closed, laugh it off and move on with life - or so I thought.
Time went by, living in the new city was going well, the kids were getting bigger, and I was able to purchase my very first house in November. First time home buyer loan companies are very, very thourough about checking credit history, and nothing overly negative showed up - No collections, which would have been a huge red flag. All was well enough even to finance a new car a couple months later!
So two years go by and I'm simply refinancing my home, and what shows up on my credit, but this strange collection from some company I had never heard of! Did I forget to pay the cable bill? I called up the company, and found out that they had bought the accounts from the collection agency that I dealt with 4 years prior, and of course I had no records because I assumed the matter was finito. After a half a day of phone calls and faxes, I found out that it was that old utility collection that I had already paid off! And I had no proof! But luckily I was able to get it taken care of between the two collection agencies and was smart enough to have something faxed, which I have in my file cabinet to this day. Which brings us to present day and the daily automated phone messages that I've been coming home to for the past week from the company I discovered is True Logic Financial, which most likely has bought my account info from the previous collection agency who neglected to update my old collection as paid off. (And to think this was all from some customer service rep's typo!!!)
So, tomorrow I will call their 866 number with proof in hand ready to fax at their request. I just hope that THEY can finally put this matter to rest and successfully clear my account of this once and for all!
Scary to think how much grief we go through just from incompetant data entry clerks who make one little typo that screws up our credit for life!
0 comments