I question the legality of Cornerstone Credit Services LLC practices & their ethics! I'll refer to them as CCS.
My medical bills from a doctor was sent to CCS. Whenever they called & were even minimally sociable or polite about the bill, I would pay them as much as I could at the time, usually about $50. Occasionally, I would get a very rude person & I would tell them that I'd make a payment at the doctor's office & he could get it from there, which I did. I requested a copy of the bill several times, but never received it until I was served on.
As many people do, I would occasionally get an automated phone call that asked me to call a number, but it did not identify the person or company that it represented, nor did it show the caller ID. For those reasons, I figured that it was either a sales pitch or a scam & I would not call it.
On 5 June I was served papers, saying that I was being taken to court for not paying a bill to CCS. On the court papers, it said I owed $734.20 & directly underneath, it said "Unpaid debt plus attorney fees & interest". It looked like that was the total amount that I owed.
I looked at the 16 pages of the account & saw that about 1/2 of it was blacked out for the description of the charges, but the amount was listed. I decided to ask the doctor's office about it. They cooperated with me & in fact, informed me that there were 2 or 3 payments that I'd made that weren't listed. Their remaining balance was about $80 or so less that what the Credit Co demanded.
Well, after considering that if I went to court, I'd spend more than that, I decided to not fight the case & pay it off. I had to file my answer with the District Court however, so on the papers, I checked the "Agree with Plaintiff" but added "with reservations" & explained about the missing payments. I also said that I expected that court costs would equal or exceed the difference, so I was not going to fight it. After giving it to the clerk, I wanted to give her a check for the amount, but was told that I have to give it to the Credit Co. Via the phone or mail. This was on 21 June.
I called their phone # & asked to pay off the account. Supprisingly, the amount was not what was stated on the Court papers! They claimed, that to pay it off, I had to pay $1,047.72! I was shocked! The person on the phone claimed that the extra amount was the attorney, filing & intrest fees!
Having already signed off on the court papers, I assumed that I could not do anything about the new total. They claimed that to pay off my bill, I had to give them a check payment over the phone, right then, or there would be more intrest charges added each day. I paid the new total.
Later that evening, the phone rang & a message came thru: "Please call 1-907-770-8122"... Nothing indicated who it was from or what it was referring to, other than it was directed at my husband, this time! The caller ID was not made available, but it was almost identical to the # that I had to call to pay off my bill with CCS (1-907-770-8100). Since my husband was not home, I decided to call the # & see what this was about. It was CCS, now calling about a bill that he had forgotten to pay. The female at the other end looked up the account & gave me the total, which I had to give another check for.
Is this way of collecting a debt legal or even ethical? Aren't they being deceptive by not identifying themselves when they set up the automated call to the clients?
Wasn't "734.20 Unpaid debt plus attorney fees and interest" the sum-total? Having not gone to court, how could they suddenly charge $1,047.72?
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