I first recieved notice from this company in Nov. 2003 stating that I owed them for a check that was bounced at AMES in 1999. This was the first I had heard of it so naturally i was leary.
I called them up and questioned the debt, such as why i hadn't heard about it once in 5 years. The woman started threatening me that if i didn't make a payment immediately that they would just walk my papers over to court and sue me. She said it's not her fault i'm a thief and write bad checks. That pretty much set off the alarm that this was not a legit business they were running.
This same woman started calling all day everyday, even harrassing my mother saying "no wonder your daughter is such a snot with a mother with your attitude" because my mother told her to stop calling our home. I wrote to them stating to never call me and that i want proof of this debt because i'm not just sending them money.
I didn't hear from them again for over a year and a half then I recieved a letter in June with a copy of a check to ames I wrote stamped "unpaid". They also tacked on over 200 dollars worth of fines. I disputed the fines seeing as they took the time to write back to me, i wasn't delaying their process. I also requested they provide who was collecting on the check in the first place because it was for 45.00 and i believe I would have paid it immediately when it had bounced seeing as I kept that bank account for months after that check. I also asked them to provide their liscence number to collect in my state because i believe they are not liscenced.
Instead of responding to me they posted this unvalidated debt to my credit record in august of falsly stating that i had been paying the debt with them. So I then filed complaints against them with the Attorney General's office, the federal trade commision, the BBB of NJ and my credit company. I recieved a letter recently from them stating that they had recieved notice of my complaint to the BBB.in the complaint I stated I believed I had paid this debt years ago and that their collection tactics were illegal and harrassing.in light of this report they stated they would now drop all collection attempts and not request proof of payment from me.
This has been a horrible ordeal and for anyone who has bounced a check and paid it watch out. It's really hard to find records from that long ago; especially since both the bank had used and the store the check was too went out of business years ago. I was even concerned they just got a hold of an old check and put a stamp on it and copied it; i really wouldn't put it past them at this point. The whole thing seems sketchy. I am just hoping now that the credit agency finds their reporting of this debt invalid and removes it. I had nothing negative on my account before this incident.
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