My husband and I are both in the military. In 1996/1997 we got a loan through The Associates in Abilene, Texas. We were young and just starting out. We ended up having more bills than we could handle, but we paid Associates on time. We decided to let a credit counseling company consolidate our bills in 2000. When the company sent the payment to Associates, Associates sent it back, saying the account had changed and they had merged with Citifinancial. I got an account number from Citifinancial, and the payments went to that account from Dec to Jan.
In 2002 we received a letter from a collection company saying they had bought our (paid off) account from Citifinancial. I could not believe it! I called Citifinancial, and they claim they never merged with Associates and never received any payments from the credit counseling company. They claim they do not even have our account. Well, where did the money go? The account has now been turned over to another collection agency, and the amount they were claiming we owed at first has changed.
This has been really hard on my husband and me. I have been going back and forth with this for two years. It is hard to keep up with it because nobody knows what is going on. I am now looking at getting a lawyer, because this has messed up our credit, and I am sure it has kept us from getting good financing on our car. We have deployed quite a bit over the past two months, and for them to just blow it off like it is not their fault really makes me mad.
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