DPB

They received the letters 7 days ago. I was was turned down for credit because of these collections. I was purchasing a car and when the dealership ran my credit they informed me of the collections. I had no knowledge of them until that point. So I had to get a co-signer to get the car. Since then my score has improved some and I can finance things on just my credit, but at a higher interest rate. So it has caused financial harm. Even if I have to pay an attorney, it’s worth it to not have three collections on my credit for the next four years. The way I see it, I’m either going to have to pay an attorney to fix it now, or pay higher interest rates for the next four years while I wait for the collections to drop off of my reports. I’ll PM you the name of the CA now.

Well, it’s been about a week since I sent the letters to the OC and the hospital. How long do I give them to respond? And is the next step to hire an attorney? I'm not trying to rush this, but I don’t want to wait too long to file suit if that’s where this ends up going.

Thanks. It's all typed up. I'll mail everything in the morning.

Should I remove the parts of the letter that talk about paid accounts and patients paying in full out of pocket? Since I'm using insert B (2) I'm not including any payments.

Awesome! Also, I just got home and checked the mail. There was a letter from the CFPB regarding the complaint against TU with the same information as the one from EX. I’ll call tomorrow so they can tell me that they aren’t doing anything to help. But, there was also a response from the CA. They didn’t bother to type anything up. No cover letter or anything. But they sent me the original bills from the OC. So at least I finally have some of the information that I’ve been requesting. I’ll type the letter to the OC tonight and mail it out tomorrow. Edit: After reading the info sent from the CA, it doesn't provide contact info for the OC. It just gives the PO Box for the company they use to collect payments. So I googled them. The physician association has a local address, which happens to be the same address as the hospital. I'm planning to send the HIPAA letter to the local address and cut out the middleman.

The EOBs don’t specifically say that they should be resubmitted. They just say what I posted before, that they are over the contracted price. Or is that the same thing?

I looked through my records and I found the original bills from the hospital and the EOBs for both the hospital and doctor's association. It turns out that I was incorrect on the service dates. All three are from 2015, not 2014 as I originally thought. I ended up in the ER at least a dozen times in 2014 and 2015, so I must have confused the service dates. The EOBs for the hospital show the amount that I owed, which I paid. The EOBs for the physicians state "Charge exceeds fee schedule/maximum allowable or contracted/legislated fee arrangement." I know for a fact that I called the insurance company when I received these EOBs and was told that the provider needed to resubmit the bills. I also know for a fact that I called the provider and relayed this information to them. I was told they'd rebill the insurance and that if I owed anything that they would contact me - which they never did. Unfortunately, I can no longer get any information from the insurance company, Assurant Health. They ceased coverage in Florida in 2016, and they do not have a phone number to call. Should I still send the OC the HIPAA letter with insert "b" (2)? Or do I need to do something different since the service dates were in 2015? Or did I screw this whole thing up because I was mistaken about the service dates?

I received a response from EX yesterday. Their letter said that they had already investigated my disputes and that they aren’t going to investigate it again. Also, that I should contact the original creditor, but without giving me the OC information. Today I got a letter from the CFPB saying that they got a response fro EX and that the complaint was now closed. The letter didn’t give the results, but said that I need to call during the week to get the results. I’m guessing that they aren’t going to do anything since the collections are still on my report. So what do I do now? Do I need to find an attorney and file suit against EX? And am I including the CA in that? I still haven’t heard back from TU or the CFPB regarding that complaint.

Thanks. Should I also file a CFPB complaint against the CA?

I sent you a PM with a copy of the letter to the CRAs. Would you mind looking it over before I mail it out? I'd greatly appreciate your input. Thanks for all the help.

I have filed complaints with the CFPB for both EX and TU (TU responded with the same response as EX). The instructions say to send a copy of the complaints with another dispute to each CRA. Which dispute form am I using for this? I want to make sure I send the correct letter. Thanks.

All three service dates were in 2014, so just over four years. I’m not willing to pay them because the amount for each of the bills exceeds my max out of pocket expense for that year. I’m not going to pay what would equal four times my max cost for the year, especially since I had other medical bills that caused me to reach the max. I would not have had to pay anything at all if they had billed my insurance correctly. So I’ll file a CFPB complaint against EX tomorrow. I’ll wait until I get the TU results before I proceed with a complaint against them. How likely is it that the CFPB complaint will work? And how long does this process take to remove this type of collection from my reports?

These are from my real reports from annualcreditreport.com. They were never deleted from EX or TU. They were deleted from EQ, but I’m not sure why as I never disputed with them. They are legit accounts from ER visits. But OC never billed the insurance correctly. I have the EOBs stating that (somewhere - I have to dig through a stack of papers). It’s definitely not ID theft/fraud, just errors from the OC. It looks like the CA has no interest in verifying the relationship with the OC. And the CRA just verifies with the CA, who obviously just says “yep that’s correct, we want our money.”

I got the response letter from EX today. Same exact response as I got for the initial dispute letter: “Outcome: Remains - The company that reported the information has certified to Experian that the information is accurate. This item was not changed as a result of our processing your dispute. Please review your report for the details.” There were no other details. The collections show exactly as they did before. I also received none of the other information/verification that the DV requested. Also, I have received nothing at all from either the CA or OC. I haven’t received the results from TU yet, but Credit Karma still shows the accounts as unpaid collections. I need these collections off my credit reports because I will need to apply for some new credit as well as two auto refinances in a few months. So, what do I do now? What is the next step?

Thanks. I just wasn’t sure how long to wait. And yes, EQ is clean. For some reason the three collections were removed earlier this year. I never disputed to EQ, so I have no idea why they were removed. I noticed on Credit Karma that they were gone. And when I pulled my reports through annualcreditreport.com, sure enough, the collections weren’t listed at all.