Expert: Creditwrench - 6/30/2008

Question
I have been making payments for about 3 years to a clinic that did a surgery for me. I was set up with a payment plan. I thought I was ahead because I sent them 200.00 or 4 months worth of payments. I then skipped 1 month and then continued to make the 50.00 a month payments. I separated and moved out of the home and continued to make my payments for the next 4 months via my internet auto banking. I was not getting the clinic's statements because they were being sent to my original home. I didn't think much about the statements because I was making all of my payments or more and the checks were being cashed. I got a call from home stating that I had a 50.00 check from the clinic and found that the last 3 50.00 payments were sent to a collection agency and that I had been turned over to a debt collector 4 months ago because of the 1 month missed, although I had made all of the extra payments ahead of time.
My question is: If the clinic was issued a check to them and it was cashed, can they turn me over to a debt collector?

Answer
They can turn you over to a debt collector any time they want to. Some medical facilities turn patients over to collections if the bill is not paid in full within 30 days. Some in 60 days and some in 90. Car loans are getting bad about that too now with the economy so bad. Capital One who is one of the nations worst auto loan companies start calling you almost incessantly once you go past 30 days. Fail to make the payment on time and your phone starts ringing off the hook. The only way to get any relief is with a caller ID that you can add a name to the number that shows up on the screen. Needless to say, they have multitudes of phone numbers to call from to make it nearly impossible for the average consumer to recognize each and every phone number and who it belongs to. Only certain cell phones can do that. If you happen to have one of those you can use call forwarding so all calls go to your smart phone which can quickly catch all their phone numbers and then they go to using "unknown" numbers to trick the consumer into answering. At that point they go into long and nasty harangues to get you to pay up on time. If the debtor lets it go into the second month he is in grave danger of getting his car repoed.

But the new problem is that with the economy getting worse and worse every day debt collectors are so busy that they aren't able to keep up with their demands for service and their actual collections are deteriorating rapidly. Debt collectors are going broke too even though their work load is going through the roof.

Their heavy work load means they are getting pressured more and more from their creditor who are also getting desperate for collections so they are getting lax on their FDCPA compliance.

That means they are more likely to get sued by knowledgeable consumers for their violations. In your type of situation you need to start learning about the violations those debt collectors are likely to make and how to spot them. Debt collectors and their attorneys can easily be tricked into making violations as well.

All phone conversations need to be recorded, even though your calls are all forwarded to your phone. That can be done by using small digital voice recorders which can be kept handy in purse or pocket.

If you are a stay at home worker or mom you can get a free computer program called wavepad which has a recording function built right in and a $17 recording controller from radio shack which will plug into the microphone jack of your computer or any other recording device and record those debt collectors for evidence which you can use later in court.

Bill Bauer
405-684-9297
405-227-9423

RECOMMENDED READING:
www.creditwrench.com/howjudgmentswork.html
www.creditwrench.com/18questions.html
www.creditwrench.com/Howtodefeatdebtcollectors
www.creditwrench.com/objections.html

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