Hello All-

I am in the process of trying to remove a medical collection from my DW report.

I read the process many times and sent a dispute letter to Equifax, as it is the only one reporting. I received this correspondence from them today:

We have researched the collection account. Account #47XXXX The results are: Equifax verified that this item belongs to you. If you have additional questions about this item please contact: Slimebag Collectors, LLC.

SO, my question is: Which letter do I use now and to whom do I send it?


Thanks in advance guys

ttt

How old is this collection? What state are you in? Have you received any notices from the OC or the CA yet? Is this something that insurance should have paid, etc....?

I am going to assume this is an unknown debt and received no notices in my response to your question above.

Assuming you have already opted out and deleted old addresses, send this to the CA:

http://whychat.5u.com/ltrcavalhipaa.html

If you received no notices, you will include this portion in your letter (as described in the link I gave you):

"This letter is being sent to you in response to your recent fraudulent verification of an unknown medical account on my (name of CRA) report"

As soon as you receive the green card back from the CA, then send this to the CRA:

http://whychat.5u.com/ltrcavalhipaa.html#DISPUTE

Then report in THIS thread any response you receive.

DragonFlyer-

Thanks for your response, but unfortunately this debt is legitimate and subsequently my wife has been contacted numerous times by the CA.

This being said, do I still proceed with your previous advice or do I send something to the OC?

Thanks again for all your help-

The HIPAA letter program is designed to get a deletion from reports.
On VALID debts, once the RELATIONSHIP between the OC (original creditor health care provider,) has been established and documented by the use of the initial dispute letter to the CRA's then payment is made DIRECTLY TO THE OC, if you try to do it yourself, they will tell you to pay the CA and your wife will wind up with a "paid" collection on her reports, which is just about as bad for her credit as an UNPAID one.

The debt may be "valid" however, unless you have direct documentation from the OC that they have assigned the account to the SAME CA who is reporting, the account AS REPORTED is NOT VALID.

In addition, unless your wife has a copy of an original bill from the OC and/or an EOB ( explanation of benefits) from her insurance that MATCHES the amount reported as being HER responsibility, it may NOT be valid, but may be a discounted balance from her insurance.

WhyChat-

Are you saying that before going forward with payment to the OC, we should first contact them about this debt and try to establish whether or not they sold this account to the reporting CA?

Thanks again and sorry for my lack of knowledge-

You do not contact anyone on your own. Why Chat's hipaa process establishes and documents the relationship. You just follow the steps in the process EXACTLY as instructed until the collection is deleted.

Again I want to thank everyone for their help, but I am still unaware of what to do next. What letter do I use now and to whom do I send it?

I understand your confusion, this is all probably very new and strange to you, judging from your posts.

The original advice given you by dragonflyer is the advice you should follow;


In spite of your assertion that the DEBT is valid, the REPORTING is most likely NOT.

Please let us know your date of service for this account.

Ok. I sent off WhyChats medical dv letter and have received the green card. Now what? Do I wait for a response from the CA, or do send out a letter to the CRA requesting removal? Please advise.

As soon as I received the green card back from the CA, I sent the above letter to the CRA. Today I got a response from equifax which says:

We have researched the collection account. Account #47XXXX The results are: Equifax verified that this item belongs to you. If you have additional questions about this item please contact: yada yada yada.

Still no word from the CA as they have until August 14 to respond. This being said, What is my next move?

Thanks again-

Is this ONLY reporting on Eq.??

What was the date of service??

Do you have any billing from the OC??

Yes this in only reporting to Eq.

Im unsure of the date of service, however the date of 1st delinquency reports as 03/2005.

No billing from the OC.

*** On a side note, years ago and before this debt went to collections, my wife was making payments to the hospital on a monthly basis. This was until one day she called to make a payment as was told that it was sent to collections because she wasn't paying off the balance fast enough. This was a surprise to us because I thought that as long as we were making payments we would be okay. Anyway, the only thing that remains from this debt is the derog on the credit report and an occasional call from the CA, who by the way, have never sent anything to her in the mail.

OK, The next step is to double check your Eq. credit report to make sure that the account is still there, if it is, see if it is marked as "disputed"

Then follow these instructions;
http://whychat.5u.com/hipaaftccomp.html

I did not do a "form letter" for the follow up to the CRA with a copy of the FTC complaint because there are too many variables, you should repeat the MAIN points you covered in the complaint, do not forget to add the paragraph I DID post.

Whychat-

I never heard a thing from the CA and so I sent them a second DV only to have it ignored also. I then filed complaints with the BBB and the FTC. Here is the response I got from the BBB:


Ms. gdevita105 was sent a letter in June 2007, which contained all FDCPA required notices. She did not respond at that time.

We received a letter dated September 1, 2009 requesting we cease all collection activities. We will treat this as a request not to call, and will not attempt to call her on this matter.

This communication is from a debt collector. It is an attempt to collect a debt. Any information will be used for that purpose.


And so I responded with this:

I have several problems with the response provided by the CA. Not only did I not receive the a fore-mentioned letter in June of 2007, I have never received any correspondence from them. Also, even though this company acknowledges the letter they received on September 1, 2009, they have continued to call me as recently as last week, of which I have documentation. This alone places the CA in violation of fair debt collection laws. Lastly, this company continues to report this alleged debt to my credit bureaus, even though they have failed to produce any documentation that legal proves I owe them anything. Therefore, I ask again that they remove this collection from and/all of my credit reports and send me a confirmation letter which states this. If not, I do reserve the right to pursue legal action against this firm for their documented violations.

Today, I found out that the CA chose not to respond to my rebuttal. Now what?????
Also, the letter that the CA acknowledges in their initial response was the second DV, they received the first DV on July 16, 2009.

Please help- I need this removed but with no response from the CA, I don't even know if they represent the OC, in which case the HIPAA process wont even work.

Please advise-

bump for Why Chat

The BBB can be helpful in credit repair but typical only if the CA is a member of the BBB, ANFI is a member of the BBB. Make sure you notify the BBB that your complaint has not been resolved to your satisfaction, this will only downgrade the CA's rating with the BBB if they are not a member they will not care.

When you submitted your complaint to the FTC did you print a copy prior to submitting it? The printed copy should be sent to the CRA:
Attention Equifax Compliance Department.