Expert: Creditwrench - 10/8/2008

Question
My daughters were both in the hospital in Arizona and we started receiving bills with a total due of approx. $2300 from a company called Medpro last December.  I had a payment plan with them to pay $75 each month for each account.  I fell ill myself in March and missed a month of payment. I made a $150 payment to Medpro in April.  I then get a letter from Wakefield & Assoc, a collections agency in May.  I responded to them first by phone stating I was willing to pay $75 a month toward the debt (same as I paid Medpro).  The nasty lady on the phone said "that just wouldn't do anything for my client."  She asked if we could get a 2nd mortgage, borrow etc. I told her based on our financial burdens, that was impossible.  I also wrote a letter to Wakefield & Assoc, in a good faith effort to set up a payment plan of $150 a month in July 2008. I never received any response from them or confirmation they accepted that.  I did make 3 payments to them in the amount of $150 over the last 3 months.  Then, in August I get a letter from Dennis Scarkey, attorney stating they own the debt and I owe them $2300. I immediately wrote them a letter asking them to validate the debt, as I had never spoken to them before.  They sent me back a computer printout of my daughter's treatment in the hospital, and a page that had a handwritten note "in collections $2361".  I continued to pay my $150 a month to Wakefield.  Then on Oct. 2, 2008, I get a summons and complaint hand-delivered to my home. I have 20 days to respond.  What should I do? How should I respond?  Should I contact Medpro and ask for a settlement or negotiate again?  Thanks.

Answer
Negotiate? The time for that is now past. Time to start getting nasty with them. You have a summons and the time to rewpond is now nearly over. If you don't respond you will get a judgment against you and then the real trouble will start. I would respond using a graduated denial but count on the fact that no matter how you respond they will get a judgment. To win you will have to learn how to take them to federal court. In order to do that you will need to learn what they have done to violate the law and how to determine whether they break the law in the process of trying to collect on the judgment.

From here on in you are going to have a rough time trying to get violations but it can be done.