Received a collections notice from CBCS on May 30. Form was dated May 27 and stated I owed the past due amount of $67.35 to Comcast Cable-Knoxville TN. Since I have an active account with Comcast Cable-Knoxville, TN, for which the last bill on May 22 was $11.47, I called the number to inquire.
First off you cannot even talk to anyone unless you give your phone number to the auto-answer. I tried going through the "enter your account number" option to circumvent giving personal information but it refused the number I read off their letter. So I put in an old phone number that is still searchable but no longer active.
The agent claimed I owed money for an account closing April 1999 that was not in Knoxville but in Knox County. Problem with that is I still have an account with Comcast-Knoxville, which is paid up, so there could not be any uncollected amounts. Plus the fact that accounts over 7 years are dropped, unless an unscupulous collection agency falsifies reports to re-open the collections as current and active. If I owed money from a previous address then Comcast would have had me pay it first before transferring service to the 4 addresses I have had since then.
She claimed to be submitting a fraud report for me. Since reports cannot be generated by collection agencies I was on-guard. She demanded personal and professional contact information, to which I responded "No". When she stated that my refusal to cooperate was being documented I asked how someone on SSDI could cooperate if they had no information to give. Of course she got defensive and ranted at me about how she was not going to argue but I was wrong because... Because... Because...
At beginning of call she read the "this conversation is being recorded" to me, but seems that she forgot everything would be recorded if anything. After the lecture on my refusing to give information she quickly gave a fax number for me to send 2 forms of ID with my SSN included and bills showing my residence from pre-1999 to present, addressed to Mrs Blue. The number she gave is not one assigned to Comcast, even the area code was wrong. There is no Mrs Blue working at Comcast, I have friends who work in their Human Resources Dept and they searched all employee rosters for all offices with no success. Usacomplaints. Coms has other entries that say Mrs Blue is a CBCS representative. So if our conversation was recorded then they have evidence of their own fraud, but I really think it was a personal 1-888 number for identity phishing. (The information she demanded to be faxed could have been used to attack my credit, my current accounts, etc and all the information would be correct so no way to fight it.)
Comcast has confirmed I was never in collections in 1999. That when I moved there was a balance outstanding for old address but when I reactivated service at new address 3 months later they attached it to my bill which was paid in full and on time. So I have never received a collections notice before, and Comcast did not hire CBCS or other agency to collect from me. Somewhere somehow CBCS picked up something and cross referenced it to my new address where my last Comcast bill was sent but is not my service address.
I am also submitting this report to Fair Credit Practices and other agencies that handle fraud charges. Since they demand credit card numbers to collect on fraudulent accounts other consumers who lost money to CBCS this way can file a CC Fraud charge as well.
Contact Information on notice:
CBCS PO Box 69, Columbus OH 43216
1-888-413-0093
Actual CBCS address according to phone company:
CBC Credit Servs
250 E Town St
Columbus, OH 43215
(614) 222-4343
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