whatsanenigma

I'll leave the expert advice to WhyChat, but let me tell you what happened to me. I used his pre-hipaa letter and many collections, even those I knew were valid, fell off without me having to pay them. The funny thing is about the valid ones that I had tried to call the OC to pay what I owed, because I had just gotten a loan, and they said it was illegal to take payment after the bill had gone to collections. Too bad for them I found creditboards a few days later. They wouldn't take their money when it was offered, so now they don't get a dime. Of course, if I remember right it was all for substandard medical care anyway, ha. And believe me when I tell you this, medical CAs on your account count just as much as any other thing. I've been told it to my face on multiple occasions when I tried to get credit. Don't think you're going to get cut any slack for them being medical, sorry to say. My advice is don't even consider a pfd unless WhyChat specifically says you should at some point after hearing your whole situation and how your hipaa letter program progresses. Listen to what he says-he's good!

Well, that clarified matters.

This thread seems to have taken a very random turn.

You could be even more explicit than that and have the SO write "I resent the implication that I am a necrophiliac. I like to hear them scream, thank you very much." But that might be OTT, ha ha.

Just wanted to bump this for WhyChat when he returns on Jan 5. I can't help much, but I do want to say I am sorry for your loss and I hope you can find some peace soon.

That sounds really OTT to me, more so than other assistance programs I've heard about. Is there a form available on the website for any relevant hospital, for example? Have you talked to the people on the phone who run the program? Maybe they can guide you a little better. Also, it's true you won't be able to file BK again for a number of years, I believe seven. Were these bills due to one or several discrete events that you don't expect to occur again (e.g., a car accident)? Or are they due to someone's long term illness? That makes a difference. If they were out of the ordinary circumstances, then BK might be your best option. But if the problem is ongoing, BK would only be a temporary solution at best. You need to figure out why the bills are so high and get a plan in place for how to handle future bills before you file BK, or BK will only be a temporary fix. I filed a BK for medical bills myself (discharged March 2005) so I understand this problem. I didn't have health insurance for several years and a long term illness caused my bills to pile up. As soon as I got a job with health insurance, I filed BK, so that worked out well, or, as well as one expects, I suppose. You will need to evaluate your own situation to know if it will work for you also or not.

This is similar to the 1-2 punch but it is worded specifically to invoke the hipaa and medical privacy laws, so you have a very specific legal reason for having the stuff removed.

How come some merchants accept student id then? That is technically not a government id. I don't know which merchants want official government IDs and which will settle for a student or work ID, which of course you need a government ID to get, but the overall point is that this isn't about what counts as valid ID in what circumstance. This is about whether or not a merchant can refuse to accept a credit card that has a picture on it. If everything else is in order-if the card is signed-then the merchant must compare signatures and cannot refuse to accept the card based merely on the fact that it bears the cardholder's photo. Whether or not such a card can or should stand on its own as ID, for itself instead of a seperate ID or for another purpose, is not the point here.

Of course the company wouldn't accept it as valid ID-I wouldn't expect them to. But that's not the point. The point is that no ID at all is required for a signed credit card. And if the card has a picture on it, that doesn't change that fact. If the card is signed, the clerk compares the signatures and that is all.

I can't testify to the effectiveness of a teal font, because I ended up writing my letters out by hand because my personal color printer was on the fritz, so I would have had to print in color from a public color printer then paid for a color copy onto a stationary that wasn't plain white...less hassle to write it out by hand. I used a dark green ink pen on some fancy stationary the same size as printer paper-this was some pretty stationary, with a background of vertical lines and some random shiny bits. The letters ended up looking very pretty but also very legible to a human eye. And I got results! So, it works. ETA: All three CRAs responded by mail within two weeks, though I believe they have a full 30 days for a paid report and 45 for a free one.

I don't know where the thread is, but here is WhyChat's page about SOL. http://whychat.5u.com/States/states.html

I had a situation similar to yours-a random letter from a CA claiming I owed a medical bill I had no knowledge of and didn't remember getting an original bill for. I sent the letter WhyChat links here in this thread, and I eventually got back a letter from the CA saying they were turning the debt back over to the original provider and would not try to collect any more. And that was the end of that. It never showed up on my credit reports or anything like that.

That makes sense. You could probably tell by when they asked. Still, though, I would think they could then insist on ID saying they suddenly don't believe you are not underage. Just to be a pain in the neck, you know? I hope they wouldn't, but it's still a possible loophole. Agreed 100%. But maybe the original company will now contact the OP and apologize for the trouble, saying it's not them that sent the email, and maybe a discount will follow. Let us hope.

Thanks for the tip!

By using WhyChat's process, I have had several legit debts fall off without my having to pay them. Sometimes the connection between the CA and the OC is somehow lost and the debt can't be verified and you are off the hook. Not that you should count on this happening. I just know that sometimes it does, because it happened to me. And I don't feel the least bit guilty, because I called the OC, trying to pay, and they got snotty and said I had to deal with the CA, which I didn't want to do. Soon after that, I found creditboards, and that debt fell off right after I sent the pre-hipaa. If they had wanted their money, they should have taken it. (And it was for pretty shoddy medical service in the first place!)