OK, here is the skinny:
An old (6-7 years ago) hospital bill has shown up in collections on my husband's credit report. It is $94.00. He doesn't think it really belongs to him. We tried to dispute it with the credit bureau but somehow they (experian) misunderstood the dispute and sent us back a letter saying something about his residential address history (I don't remember exactly what it said, this was about a year ago), but nothing about the collections account.
We have not received any bills or phone calls from the collection agency, ever. (He also doesn't remember ever receiving bills from the hospital before he moved to OR either). I do not want to contact the collection agency because I'm worried they'll start hounding us. I have heard of Debt Validation, does this seem like the way to go for this situation?
The debt originated in CA, and we live in OR now. As I understand it, the CA SOL is what applies, which is 4 years. So that means they can't pursue collections, correct?
On his credit report, it says the date it was last active is June 2000. Someone told me collection accounts remain for 7.5 years from the last date of activity so it should be falling off in January 2008, right? If we seek validation, will that count as "activity" and make it stay on longer? If it turns out to be his and we pay it, will that make it stay on longer?
Will we be better off just waiting another 6 months for it to fall off?
