Collections question

Repost from the Rustled thread. Thought someone might have some insignt. The only reason I am concerned as mentioned in the other thread I do up to year long consulting contracts and normally rent a house for up to a year and most rentals now are with an agency which checks credit. I once offered to pay a years rent in advance in cash and they said they didn't want any drug dealers in the house lol.

Is it on the credit report score for 7 years now? I haven't financed anything in probably almost 20 years. I do very well income wise and I live like someone who makes 1/4th of what I make.

Repost.

In April my credit score was 805. I have no payments other than my normal credit card usage. I have one credit card. No other bills outside of that other than utilities and property tax etc.. I own my two homes outright with no mortage. I own my two vehicles outright. I mostly use the credit card for purchases that are more than the maximum debit card limit in a 24 hour period etc...

I got sick and didn't have anyone with a power of attorney. Due to the brain swelling while being sick I really was of right mind to put it shortly. I had a $137 bill from the hospital I was in due to the problem. After 60 days that single bill went to collections.

Now my credit is 635 due to a collection which says on my credit 7 years and my lack of other outstanding credit because I pay cash for everything.

I will I was just wondering on what grounds I could appeal it on since apparently I got a bill and didn't pay it. I assume with the collection agency?

It did drop. I got the score from a few services and everyone of them has a list of why it dropped or what it is. Lack of ourstanding credit. I have one credit card with a balance of whatever I charged that month which is normally something like a business lunch. No mortgage, no vehicle credit etc....I pay cash for everything including my two houses and my two trucks. I make very good money and I live like someone who makes 1/4 of what I make. As mentioned the only reason I only ever check the actual score is because I sometimes have to rent a short term home and they have started checking.

As far as I know the last thing I actually financed besides charging to a credit card was a vehicle in the mid 90's and those payment histories only stay on so long after you pay it off. I also had a rural development loan around the same time period and it was paid off in a lump sum as well.

I checked it back in February or March because I was going to get a Rural Development loan for some land and another house and the woman at the bank that can do the RD loans approved it in a day. Her number and my number were similar. This was for $400k and I was thinking of using it more of a short term deal. They only finance for 30 years but you get an excellent rate because it's backed by the federal government and there's no maximum you can make. I was going to get it and pay it off in a short order. The only restriction I had was the the house on the land couldn't have a pool and it needed to be surveyed to make sure it wasn't in a flood zone (Huge deal here).

The only thing on my actual credit report is having no negatives. I have a credit history length of 30 years at age 43 which is odd. My parents put me on their credit card in my early teens and then when I got 18 they just had it changed over or however they did and I kept their payment history. I pay my utilities and property tax/income tax and that's about it and neither of those report.

Anyway I talked to the hospital and it wasn't their bill. She said they don't turn over to collections. I don't know if she meant in a period of X or just forever. The collection agency apparently is not used to dealing with people who actually WANT to pay their bills. I said just send me an invoice for the total and I'll pay it and she went into the hard sell. I didn't need the hard sell. I needed an invoice.

I'm not going to really get into fighting it. The actual bill was $118 and she had another for $20 which hasn't gone to collections and I believe I paid it at some point and it may need to work thru the system. I really don't care. I'll just pay it all we're talking $137 or whatever it was.

This is why I normally don't screw with paying on credit. The hospital had a SHIT fit when I needed another MRI and the insurance would only allow one for every X period of time and I told her I would pay cash. The hospital couldn't come up with a cash amount they needed. Apparently they want that insurance regardless so they have an "open" ended account I guess to charge for unknown stuff along the way.

Noodleface_sl said:

There is absolutely no way your credit score dropped 170 points from one account going into collections. There's more to the story here, but I won't pry.

Here's what you do. Contact the collection agency via certified letter asking for them to confirm the debt. Say you will give them 90 days before you contact the credit bureaus to remove it from your credit rating due to lack of confirmation of debt (however you want to word that). If they do confirm your debt, write another certified letter requesting that you will pay the debt off in full if they will remove it from your credit report. Get their response in writing.

If they won't do that, let it just fade away. If they do allow it, make copies of everything and pay it off. Then you simply provide their proof to the credit agencies to get it removed.

Don't just pay it off blindly because it will still remain on your credit report.

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I will think about it. Right now I'm just stewing on it. I contacted everyone on the list including the hospital and the Dr.'s to make sure I didn't owe anything else that would go into collections and it was all clear/paid from everyone else.

I now have a joint account with my mother and she has power of attorney should the need arise again.

Now everyone knows my credit history lol. I didn't want to seek advice from people I work with for obvious reasons. My sister was in collections for a long time for a company but she's on a two week vacation. She's a bulldog.

On a totally unrelated note I'm pretty good firends with the president of the bank that I use. Small town bank and we BS and do lunch on a regular basis. Not like he's president of Capital One or anything. Anyway he says that several of the small places in town will finance something like furniture and then never report until you don't make a payment which apparently is illegal or whatever but he said they do it all the time.

Long thread day. Sorry got a lot going on in my head this morning. Thanks for all the advice.

I may at some point get something like another credit card and make payments just to have something else on my credit.

I hate credit, if it hasn't shown thru before. I'm prone to saying FUCK it and just going home if I don't like who I am working for and I never wanted to be someone that HAD to go to work to pay for something I didn't even need. Luckily so far those that I said FUCK it to have tried to get me to come back and consult/work for them at a later date.

Lyrical_sl said:

A few years back, a non profit I was involved in caused me to have an 86 point drop in credit score, over $47. I was paying for their website, they were supposed to take over billing, and they didn't. We told the hosting company that we'd pay the amount, if they'd send a letter to the credit bureaus, and it came off. But it took 90 days to rectify. I'd suggest Borzak do the same. Tell them you'll pay, but only if they send you a letter stating they'll have it removed from your credit bureau. Don't just pay it blindly, they won't do anything once they get their money.

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I think that is the option I will do. I will probably get my sister who ran a collections department for a remote security company for a while to do it once she gets back.

I'm relieved that apparently I have no other charges heading that way for now.

My insurance paid most of it, the owner of the company I was doing work for paid another good portion. He sent the secretary to my house (I gave him a key when I got sick and the company owned it and was on loan to me while working) and she picked up my mail and he said he paid the stuff that looked improtant which was mostly medical related. My utilties and such were sent to my parents address and they just paid those.

Mainly I didn't know they even had the option of removing it once you paid it once it reaches collections.

I would never just send a check for anything without an agreement in writing on company letterhead.

Lyrical_sl said:

They can remove it, the question is, will they? It's a matter of finding the right person at that company.

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The person I talked to today was really helpful but who knows. I got her name. Not sure if I should send the letter to her or the company. I'll let my sister word it since she is used to the language and I am more of a engineering speak type of person.

Don't know if I should just send a pure facts letter that I will pay X if you remove it or spell out why I went to collections or whatever.

When all this happend I was pretty out of it. Brain swelling for an extended period. At one point I remember making the decision to not worry about it because I had good credit how bad could it be paying a few bills late.

As I mentioned above I don't ever do anything with it being written on company letterhead and someone having signed it that I can verify that have authority to do so.

I called because it was a local company and this is a very small community. I thought there would be a 50% or higher chance she would recognize my name right off. She gave me her first name. I would never do anything illegal to get her name or try to influence my credit report. I just wanted to know if a collections company could remove it once it had been entered. There's also a 50% chance or so her husband has worked for me in the past. I'm not above greasing wheels to make shit happen as long as it appears to be legal. I thought she would recognize my name and say she knows soandso and put me on the case, but she didn't. Or maybe she did and didn't mention it. I didn't want to mention it on the comany phone she was on.

We shall see. My assistant is looking into the case to see if they are part of a large company not located here.