Advice Please! Collection Agency Calling Me Out of the Blue.

[Anonymous]

I received a call today from OAC collections today stating that I owe a debt from an ER bill. To my knowledge all of my medical bills are paid off, so if this is true, the debt must be extremely old. There are no collections listed on my credit reports from OAC and I haven't received anything in the mail. I haven't gone to the ER in years, so I'm not sure what this could be.

I am needing some advice on how to best handle this situation. The individual just hung up on me before i could ask for any information such as the account number, and the orginal creditor. Should I try to contact them back myself? Should I request them to send me everything in writing? If I do that I will have to give them my address, and I'm not sure I want to do that. Does anyone know the statute of limits in the state of Tennessee? This is a wisconsin based collection agency (I lived there up until last year) so do they even have a right to collect in my state?

Any advice would be extremely helpful. thank you.!

[JM-AM]

SOL in TN is 6 years. 

[RobertEG]

Their call to you constituted an "initial communication with the consumer."  That triggered their obligation under FDCPA 809(a) to send you a formal collection (dunning) notice within 5 days of that initial communication.  If they do not, then they will be in violation of FDCPA 809(a).  It is not your responsibility to contact them to identify the debt and the creditor is, that is their obligation. 

You dont have to wait for their collection notice before you send them a debt validation (DV) request.  However, if they did not provide you sufficient information in their phone call, that may be difficult to do.  Give it another week or so.