About a year ago, I was hospitalized briefly. When the hospital wanted to move me from one building to another about a block away, they transported me by ambulance without consulting me or my fiance first. I did NOT need an ambulance.
Eventually, I received a bill from American Medical Response for $600 (I do not recall the exact amount). Having been out of work on disability for a few months, I put the bill aside to pay once I had the funds available. Soon after, I began receiving repeated phone calls from Bay Area Credit demanding payment of the bill. I paid $50 over the phone with my credit card as a gesture of good faith and asked them to send me a statement reflecting the updated balance. I said that I would pay them another $50 the following month.
I never received a statement from them. Ever. I did not know how to contact them and they did not call me again. I (foolishly) assumed that they had written it off or that my insurance company had paid for it (which they should have in the first place), so I did nothing.
Recently, while going through the process of trying to refinance my home for a lower interest rate, I checked my credit and found that BACS had reported me as having defaulted on this debt! Your credit score does not care that it was a medical bill for only a few hundred dollars or that the collectors never bothered to contact you.
I did some detective work and found their phone number in my call history. When I contacted them, I paid the balance and inquired as to why they had not sent me a statement or called me. They said they had sent numerous statements and gotten no response. When I asked for the address they were using they gave me the name (not the address) of my fiance. I told them that was not a valid address and demanded that they rectify this with the credit reporting agencies, since it was their incompetence that caused the issue in the first place. They refused and became VERY rude. I asked to speak to a supervisor. She was equally rude and unprofessional, and eventually hung up on me.
This is ridiculous and unacceptable behavior for a collection agency and also for AMR, who never contacted me looking for payment - they sent me only one bill and never followed up.
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