I received a letter purporting to be from Fidelity Credit Management on May 26th, regarding an account I once held with CI Host, and a "past due amount". The amount listed did match my monthly billing amount for the account that I held with CI Host, and there was also an "Accrued Interest" of $40.54.
I canceled my account with CI Host in February and in good standing. I could not have voluntarily canceled my account had I owed them any remaining money. And if I had owed them any money, I feel sure that I would have been contacted sooner than 2 years, 4 months later.
Notes about the letter which strike me as suspicious:
The letter is addressed to my company name at my current address. When I held an account with CI Host, the account was under my personal name, and a previous address. No personal name is listed on this letter.
The letterhead contains no logo of the collection agency, only a typewritten name.
The letter contains a phone number, which is not a toll free (800/866/877/888) number to call.
The company office hours are limited to 8am-5pm Pacific Time.
While the company's street address is listed, the recipient of the letter is requested to mail payment, using the included form, to a post office box.
The included credit card form requests the 3 digit code on the back of the card as well as the front digits, expiration, and signature.
All of these points about this letter are very suspicious to me, and after doing research online and finding (at last count) 17 other instances of people receiving this letter, at least 2 of them on usacomplaints.com, I contacted the legal department at CI Host. My initial call was to the accounting and collection departments, which were less than unhelpful. Legal, however, was a different story.
They said this was not the first call they had received today, took my name and number, and promised to call me back by the end of the day after consulting with the lead counsel in the department.
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