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So I am in kind of a strange situation and I would appreciate some input. The medical center my family goes to contracts their billing services out to a company. This company handles all their billing, not just overdue stuff and collections. Basically, they initially issue bills under the name/letter of the medical center, and then if there are issues they will switch to using their name and identify themselves as debt collectors (I guess as a scare tactic?) All the phone numbers/addresses are the same either way, you're talking with the same (inept) people. Here is my problem. We got some bills for medical stuff, and we paid those in January. Then the billing service contacted us saying the bills were overdue, and requesting payment. I called them up and bitched them out until I got up to some level of supervisor, and they ended up sending me confirmation that those bills were paid. Now I have gotten debt letters under their own letterhead (no longer posing as the medical center) saying these accounts are overdue, will be collected, etc. I am seriously pissed off because I already spent way too much time yelling at these people about this previously and it's like nothing sticks at all. But I am not sure how to handle this at this point because of the following: 1) I don't believe the debt has actually been sold; ROI is just a contracted agency working on behalf of the medical center. Are they still subject to all the FDCPA stuff? 2) The problem isn't that I don't think the debt is legitimate or even that I don't want to pay it - it's already been paid and I would really just like a mallet to beat this into their heads. Should I still send a validation letter? Should I just send them a copy of the payment documentation they already sent me previously? Call them and scream invective until they hang up?
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Apr 29, 2015 15:26
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| # ¿ Apr 30, 2024 03:22 |
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Generally speaking, you should always ask a debt collector to validate a debt even if you are sure it is yours and valid because 1) it's a legal requirement that they be able to do so, and 2) there are way too many lovely collectors skirting around the law for you to take anyone on good faith. You aren't just verifying a debt is yours (which you may be fairly confident of) but also that the people contacting you have the right to collect on it. Sometimes debts get badly recorded or even duplicated, and if you just pay the first people to call you about it you can have another agency turn up later trying to collect on the same debt they think they own - and now what if they are right and the first people didn't actually have the right to collect?
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Dec 18, 2015 17:38
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Also, the time and money you may pour into the attempt would be far better used and achieve a great deal more if you directed them to directly improving your financial health.
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May 18, 2016 17:49
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What have you done with this debt to date? My experience with hospitals (and sadly I have quite a lot) is that they are usually quite willing to work with people on payment plans, and they'll usually let you put the balance on a payment plan and not hound you or charge fees/interest as long as you are working on it. Did you have insurance? If you didn't, sometimes they will work with you to reduce the bill accordingly if they can. Unfortunately if it has just sat without you doing anything they may not be inclined to extend and of these options to you. Have they actually sued you yet, or are they just threatening it? If it is still at the threat stage you might be able to drag it back into payments if you can work with them. Good luck. 
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Dec 10, 2016 15:05
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There was one time that I was having issues with a hospitals billing contractor and they ended up passing my bill to an attorney for collection - I was able to call them and explain what was going on, and they were ultimately fine with passing the bill back to the hospital once they understood that I did intend to pay and was trying to resolve other issues (long story). Hospitals get a lot of people who struggle/fail to pay, so they're pretty used to it. If you have contact information for whoever is actually filing the suit, try to contact them and work something out. Look at it this way, it takes them time and effort to drag it through court, and if you are broke and on disability they're going to have trouble collecting on a judgement anyway. If they can get you onto a payment plan with a 15 minute phone call, that's much better for them as well.
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Dec 13, 2016 15:58
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IANAL (and you need a lawyer now) but you are probably boned. At some point prior to this, someone sued you and there was a hearing about the debt where, I guess, you didn't show up and they just got a default judgement against you. In order to unravel it at this point, I think you would have to show there was some deficiency in the previous process - not that the debt wasn't valid/accurate, because the hearing was to resolve that, but that you were not served or notified. I don't even know if that would help you at this point.
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Dec 22, 2016 20:07
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You're not going to get them to do anything now it's paid. Why would they? The best thing you can do is not get behind on anything again, and recent good history will outweigh the bad.
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Dec 31, 2016 18:46
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Yea, that sounds like BS to me. Generally what you write on the memo field is purely for your information, and it doesn't matter what you write. You can put 'For your ugly face' and its still going to get cashed because no one looks or cares. A brief look leads me to believe that this 'Payment under protest' is only a thing limited to specific payments and locations; all the references I can find to it that don't seem insane look like they refer to paying your property tax when you disagree with the valuation and want to preserve the ability to file a protest while not actually being late on your payment. I can't see any reason it would apply to payments between two private groups. Also you can always sue someone for unjustly billing you, if your credit card company just took thousands of dollars from you for no reason you wouldn't be barred from pursuing them just because it wasn't 'under protest'.
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Jul 25, 2017 17:16
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Bear in mind that suing someone does not let you squeeze blood from a stone. If they have the money and aren't paying you, ok, you can sue them and then enforce a judgement against them. But if someone is just broke and isn't paying you because they don't have the money (or don't have the money in addition to just being lovely) then you can't really do anything with the judgement. Also you will have to do the legwork of actually making them pay (in terms of getting people to seize property or apply garnishments) so you might want to consider that. I've walked away from smaller issues because it's not worth the time to wring that money out of someone.
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Nov 1, 2017 14:14
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Lester Shy posted:I'll check with the hospital, but here's what's confusing me: who actually owns the debt now? If it's a legitimate debt, who do we owe money to, now that it's been sent to collections? I'd be happy to pay the hospital directly (assuming it's not something insurance should have covered) but I'd want to make sure that settled it. This is going to vary; there are debt collectors that essentially buy up debt companies don't want to try and collect at a reduced rice, then try to wring money out of those people. That is normally what 'debt collectors' means, that your debt has been passed on to someone else because the originator gave up on it. But, there are also companies that essentially just serve as outsourcing for collecting debts, they don't actually purchase or own the debt but act as an agent for the originator to hassle you in their place. My experience is that hospitals generally use this version; basically they have enough lovely bills that they don't really want to do more than basic billing and follow up, but also don't want to sell them off for pennies, so they give a collection company a cut to chase people down. If the bill is legitimate and you just want to pay it, you can usually pay the collector and you're fine. If there is an issue with a bill, you can usually take it back to the hospital and then pay them directly and tell the collections people it's resolved. They normally respond to DVLs with statements and such because they're working with the hospital and can actually provide that, so you should get some documentation as what it was for (although probably just a date of service and the group - that might be enough for you to figure it out)
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Oct 5, 2021 13:57
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| # ¿ Apr 30, 2024 03:22 |
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If you are planning to contest it, don't give them any information at all. Just say you have received their letter and that you require documentation to verify the debt. There is no benefit at all to saying 'well maybe my car was in your garage', make them demonstrate that. Maybe this will be enough to get them to go away, maybe they'll send you timestamped photos of the car entering/etc. You don't need to sign something to be considered liable for a fee - they would argue that by entering the lot the driver agreed to the implicit contract of the posted rates, in the same way that sitting down at a restaurant and ordering off the menu means you are then expected to pay for the food. You can argue that the driver is responsible (if you want to give them up) but they could also argue that by lending someone your car you accepted limited liability for the risks of normal use. Are you prepared to throw the driver under the bus and tell the parking company who to pursue? You could possibly give them your friend's information and have them hound that person instead, though. If not, saying someone else was driving doesn't really help. Your car was in their lot, they want to be paid. Arguments that someone else was driving or that they weren't there long enough to warrant a fee only matter if you think the parking company will be reasonable and drop it (why would they) or you are presenting them as arguments to an arbitrator (like if they sue you). The law thread is telling you to pay it because lawyers value everything against the cost of pursuing it. How much work is it going to take you to make them drop it? How much is your time worth to you? $87 is at best half an hour of a mediocre lawyer's time, which means that paying it is far more efficient then spending the time to fight it. There's nothing for you to recover here, so all the time you spend is weighed against that fee. Even if you are 100% right, if you spend ages to solve it you're coming out at a loss. At best you take five minutes to call the lawyer and see if they'll take $50 instead to settle it, and then tell your friend to pay you back (or not).
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Jan 12, 2024 15:23
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