In I used a long distance carrier, called econophone. I paid all my bills on time.in econophone went bankrupt and when I was informed, I switched carriers. I never heard of a company called Mapnad viatel and that definitely was not the name of my new carrier. There was no more correspondence from econophone after that.in I started to receive bills from a long distance carrier I did not recognize, stating I owed an amount around $14. I did not pay the bills. I called my long distance carrier and was told all my bills are paid. Then, I received a collection notice from a collection agency called Mapnad. I called FCC and was told to contact Mapnad and ask for a copy of the bill and after that, they would not be allowed to send any more notices. On their website it mentions that it is illegal for a company and the collection agency to be the same entity. I googled Mapnad because I already suspected a scam and discovered that Mapnad was both the phone company and the collection agency. I called a number on my collection notice and was told that this company took over econophone when they went bankrupt and had to collect all the unpaid bills that people owed econophone at the time of bankruptcy. I said I did not recall any upaid balances and they said I never received the last bill since econophone never sent it out due to bankruptcy. I asked why they waited 4 years. They sent the "bill" to me, a photocopy of what looked like a phone bill except that it had 3 months worth of calls on it. I never receive bills with more than one month of calls. If I ever requested old bills, they were each sent on separate sheets.in addition, I know I couldn't have been three months behind on payments. Ironically, I kept all my bills from 1999 on which I marked, "paid" after mailing the payments. This was before online payments. However, in I decided I had too much paper clutter and discarded all these records thinking it unnecessary to hold onto bills over a year old. I do remember that when I purged my old bills, none were outstanding. Additional calls to Mapnad to dispute the charges were futile. A credit report in 2005 listed my only derogatory record as Mapnad viatel C, failure to pay collection account only on Equifax and not the other two credit agencies, making Equifax the lowest score by 41 points. I got busy with other, new credit card mishaps and work and moving and failed to follow-up, given the futility of previous attempts and lack of help from the FCC. I was not aware I can dispute with CRA first. Recently, I was going through my papers again and came across the credit report from 2005. I thought I'll try erasing from my report again and this time googled Mapnad and found this site. First, I attempted to receive an updated online report from Equifax, but for some reason they couldn't grant my request online. It may be erased due to other people alerting Equifax to the scam and in any case, it should be off my report in but I want to be reassured that it will not affect my score in the long run. It seems I may have more luck this way than by filing with the CRA. I hope that is true. Thank you for your help.
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