Debt and Credit (I Don't Know Anything, Advice and Opinions Appreciated!) - Comments

My mum says they can't really get anything unless they have your social. Mark all letters return to sender is my vote. Unless they have your banking info. I forgot to ask about that. Definitely find out what info your aunt gave.

It looks like before you pay anyone any more money, you need to figure out exactly how much it is that you owe.

You can do this by contacting the cable company and asking them a few questions:

• How much am I/was I being charged per month for the cable/internet services and how much am I /was I being charged for equipment?
• What should my monthly bill look like?
• Please send me/lead me to an itemized/full copy of all my past monthly bills and payments made.

It's a lot easier to determine how much you owe when you can see what you're being charged for and when, and then you can compare it to how much you paid.

Also, you should talk to your father about how much he paid (if any), that way, when you talk to the cable company about clearing up your bill, you have all the accurate information.

Next, you should talk to your aunt about what-in-god's-name she did. It looks to me like she purposely put it in your nickname (and not your real name) because she thought it might spare you from creditors. She needs to tell you exactly what information she gave the cable company when signing you up for services (for example, what name, address, number, ssn, ect. she gave them for billing). This way, again, you're not going into a conversation with the cable company blind.

Another thing, the cable company fucked up. They're not supposed to allow people to open accounts all willynilly and without proper proof of identity. Your aunt shouldn't have been able to open up an account on your name without your consent. That's crazy. And that's something you need to bring to their attention.

If you can - and I mean, try really really really hard - devote a day to clearing this up. It'll probably mean spending long, frustrating hours on the phone with the cable company and being transferred 8 million times and repeating yourself 8 billion times, but it'll be worth it to deal with this with the cable company rather than a collection agency.

DON'T PAY ANY MONEY TO THE DEBT COLLECTION AGENCY - unless it's the absolute last resort. Collection agencies are here to bully you into paying money you think you owe. It doesn't matter to them if you're being over-charged/wrongly-charged. It doesn't even matter to them if they're the ones over-charging you. Collection agencies are infamously tricksy, too often money you give them gets 'lost' in the system, and very often you end up paying more than you owe because they're garbage at keeping proper records (maybe purposely so). They don't give a fig about you.

* I just wanted to put that out there, because you can pay exactly how much a collection agency tells you to owe and then a month later they can come back at you with some more nonsense bills, so don't mess with them unless it's absolutely necessary

As for your credit rating, if it's reached to the point where it's at a collection agency (if your bill is already considered 'in collection'), then it's already going to be report on/to your credit. BUT, it affects your credit proportionately. Your credit isn't going to take a nose-dive because you owe a cable bill, especially if your working at paying it off or clearing it up. Credit stuff doesn't work that quickly and in the grand-scheme of credit, how much they say you owe right now, isn't a huge deal. Especially since you don't have any other outstanding debts (hospital bills not included).

**Again, with the hospital bill - $100 is almost nothing when it comes to hospital bills owed - and it's not going to be a big deal with your credit. Also, if you owe that money, when you're ready to pay it, pay it directly to the hospital and not the credit collection agency. (There's nothing more annoying than paying a sum with a collection agency and then getting a bill from the original company months later saying, "Hey, where's my money?"

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Just as an aside, I had an issue with Verizon once that took me two days of all-day-on-the-phone conversation to clear up. At the time, we'd been with Verizon (same phone number) for about fifteen years and then one day the internet cut out. So in looking to see what was up with the internet, we realized the landline was out too (literally it had been out for months but no one even used it anymore, so we didn't know). Anyway. It turned out that Verizon had cut off our services and sent our final balance (something like $150 for the last month's services) to a collection agency and literally no one knew why. The people at Verizon were like, "Your service has been disconnected," and I was like, "Okay so...why? My bill was up to date," and then they were like, "It was scheduled for disconnection," and I was like, "Okay, but why?" and then they were like, "It looks like you did it," and I like, "Um...how! Why would I cancel my service and then call you about it?"

Anyway, seriously spent two days on the phone with them (repeating my story for about 20 or so different people) - for hours at a time - and at the end, they owed me money and ended up sending me a check about a month later. They tried to get me to sign back up with services with them and I was like, "You must be out of your Vulcan mind!"

Hm, I would call their head office if you can. If you can't ask to speak with a manager or someone in charge because they can seriously be assholes so it's best to just pay the fifty a month you were and they shouldn't charge interest.

I know MetroPCS keeps outgoing calls for like 3 months, but if you go in and see them, the computer pulls up way more than that. T-Mobile should be the same since they're like the same company now, and most major companies like AT&T or Verizon usually have records available. Let them know that you have debt collectors on your case for a mistake by whatever company and that you need to prove your contact with said company prior to the current incident and they'll probably be really accommodating.

@ pocahontas.
I would really appreciate that!! I haven't thought of asking what information my aunt gave, I'll have to do that. So far I've only received letters about the money owed, so I'm not so sure they have my phone number, thank goodness. I don't think my aunt meant any harm, she's pretty old and naive, so I don't think she knew what she was doing would effect me negatively in the long run. I don't remember exactly the names of the people, it was months ago that we contacted them over the situation and I didn't think twice about it then. I might remember one, but I'm not certain enough to use it confidently. I might be able to find some phone records though, see if they go far enough back that I can at least show we talked to them about it. Thank you for the insight! This entire situation is just too much for me, I have no idea what I'm dealing with.

@Playboy;
I'm so relieved to hear hospital bills don't count! I'm definitely going to return the equipment, even though it doesn't show up on the debt I owe, for some reason. I'll also see if I can set up a payment plan once I find out if the 250$ is somehow accurate, their local office is a little shady so I'm not 100% convinced the actual amount is correct.

d o u b l e

Also you could tell the hospital about you income and that you don't have the money and some hospitals waive up to 80% of the bill!

I'll talk to my mum and give you some solid information tonight. I would think without a social security number they wouldn't be able to truly get the money if you were to call and tell them something like "NICKNAME is no longer living here and we can't get a hold of her, please stop mailing our house." or something. You need to confront your aunt though, see what information she gave. That's honestly really uncool of her, and I'm wondering what she has to say about all this. Did you ever get the names of people telling you not to worry and it was a mistake? OR do you have record of those calls? If you have names or phone records showing prior calls, it might be policy like with SouthWest that if information is incorrectly given then the company is at fault.

Hospital bills can wait - they don't count towards your credit. I have thousands in medical bills because my health is more important then money so I get it but I don't pay on them right now because I don't have the money; but pay off the cable little by little - return the equipment to see if that lowers the cost and talk to them about a monthly payment so it looks good on your credit. I would be very upset with my aunt rtbh