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International collections
Tenek
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I'm Canadian and my (American) wife moved to Canada from WA a few years ago (summer '09) just before we got married. A few weeks ago, her family sent over from miscellaneous stuff for Easter / kids' birthdays and as they usually do whenever it shows up, they included some mail that was addressed to her at her now-very-outdated address. This turned out to be a collection agency asking for $250 - apparently the dentist she saw just before she came here thinks she didn't pay them enough. My wife doesn't really know what they were missing - every time she went, she paid whatever they asked her to, so there shouldn't be anything 'left over'. Obviously it's a bit murky since we're going back almost four years now - my guess is it was based on the insurance not covering what it was supposed to, but it could just be some clerical muck-up.
Apparently this isn't the first notice, but since all the mail has been traveling at the speed of "whenever they're sending a package, and remember to send the mail that they thought was important enough to keep", this is the first one that I've at least found out about, including any pre-collections stuff where the dentist's office would have asked her directly.
So our dilemma at this point is basically - should we do anything at all? I'm leaning towards "no", mostly on the grounds that:
1) We don't actually know if it's legitimate or not. I think there's probably a reasonable chance that it is, and a reasonable chance that it isn't.
2) We may or may not be able to find out - a cursory glance at debt validation stuff indicates things like 30-day windows which have probably? expired.
3) Contacting them for any reason means that instead of sending periodic letters to her grandparents' house, we're giving them an opportunity to start sending it to us directly and possibly much more frequently.
4) After, I think, 6 years, it would expire anyways, something I don't really understand that appears to mean "you still owe them but they can't force you to pay". I don't want to end up resetting that clock.
But, there's the counterargument I feel I can't objectively evaluate:
1) We may just be terrible people trying to get out of a legitimate bill and taking advantage of the fact that she left the country.
Based on the amount, it feels like too much to pay just to get them off our backs; not enough that it would be a disaster in the case of, say, lawsuit and default judgement; and also not enough to pay a lawyer. So, what do you think? Should we just pay it, poke the hornet's nest, or wait and see?
Apparently this isn't the first notice, but since all the mail has been traveling at the speed of "whenever they're sending a package, and remember to send the mail that they thought was important enough to keep", this is the first one that I've at least found out about, including any pre-collections stuff where the dentist's office would have asked her directly.
So our dilemma at this point is basically - should we do anything at all? I'm leaning towards "no", mostly on the grounds that:
1) We don't actually know if it's legitimate or not. I think there's probably a reasonable chance that it is, and a reasonable chance that it isn't.
2) We may or may not be able to find out - a cursory glance at debt validation stuff indicates things like 30-day windows which have probably? expired.
3) Contacting them for any reason means that instead of sending periodic letters to her grandparents' house, we're giving them an opportunity to start sending it to us directly and possibly much more frequently.
4) After, I think, 6 years, it would expire anyways, something I don't really understand that appears to mean "you still owe them but they can't force you to pay". I don't want to end up resetting that clock.
But, there's the counterargument I feel I can't objectively evaluate:
1) We may just be terrible people trying to get out of a legitimate bill and taking advantage of the fact that she left the country.
Based on the amount, it feels like too much to pay just to get them off our backs; not enough that it would be a disaster in the case of, say, lawsuit and default judgement; and also not enough to pay a lawyer. So, what do you think? Should we just pay it, poke the hornet's nest, or wait and see?
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Are you planning on taking out a major loan anytime soon?
We haven't checked, actually. None of our financial stuff is in the US anymore. Could try looking at it, though - thanks.
I'd just ignore it. They sent it to the wrong address, you never received it etc.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
Probably not a bad solution.
I ran into a similar issue when I ran my credit report, there was a ~$500 fee from an ER visit about five years earlier. I just called and told them that everything should have been paid by my dad's insurance, we would have covered any difference at the time, and I hadn't received any notices. I also asked them to send me a full account summary I would take a look and reconcile it against my / his accounts and what insurance should have covered at the time because I thought it was a clerical error on their part.
It turned out they didn't have detailed billing information (changed systems and could only see amount carried over) so they ended up writing it off instead of spending the time going through and reconciling their records. When they took it off my credit report, it bumped my score ~80 points.
So, when it is time to address it (try to be at least a few months before your credit report would be used to apply for a loan) just insist that it was paid in full, and detailed records of the billing. The clerks will probably rather write it off than go back through records.