Expert: Apex Credit Services, LLC - 12/19/2007

Question
I incurred an emergency room visit totaling $3,500 for one day of testing.  No overnight stay. Three months after the visit (still unemployed due to illness and unable to pay bill in full) the account was sold to a collection agency which added additional fees of $900. I agreed to payments to pay the bill and have set up automatic withdrawals for the last 14 months. I am managing more medical bills and need to reduce this monthly payment that was agreed upon. Do I have this right as long as payments are continued monthly?  Also, I didn't mention that this collection agency is accruing interest on this medical bill. Is this legal?

Answer
Letitia:

    You have the contractual right to amend any previous agreement reached with collection agencies with respect to payment terms.  However, and conversely, they also have the right to reject such an amendment.  Speaking in terms of practicality, a collection agency is not going to refuse your payment particularly when they purchased it for only cents on the dollar.  The likelyhood of them not agreeing to a lower payment amount per month is tenious insofar as they risk getting nothing at all should the refuse.

    In short, try it.  The worst thing is that they could refuse.

    They may or not be able to accrue interest on the account.  Generally, this is not legal inasmuch as the medical provider likely did not have this provision within their contract with you and thus, a subsequent purchaser of value would not have been assigned this right.

               Apex Credit Services, LLC