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I have an outstanding medical debt for $500 from when I was a poor graduate student - long story short, the hospital turned the bill over to collections without my knowledge, and it has been a black mark on my report ever since. This debt was first reported in early 2015, and the debt collection agency has been mysteriously non-responsive to my formal letters offering settlement.
I finally reached someone in the company by email, who said they would be willing to remove the item from my credit score if I paid the debt. However, this communication was limited to an email response, and the individual told me that their company policy prohibits issuing any kind of a formal letter guaranteeing removal of the collection before it is paid.
What do you all think about my options here? I'm not going to pay the debt at this point if they won't remove it from my report - besides several reasons why I still maintain that I shouldn't have been charged the $500, a paid vs. an unpaid collection looks exactly the same for all but the most recent FICO models. But at the same time, I don't really know what recourse I would have if I paid the collection, and then this individual went back on their word in the email.
What would anyone on here do? Does a promise in an email (although not a formal letter) give me any kind of recourse/guarantee that the company will follow through? Would you risk trusting the company to do what they say, or just wait for the collection to fall of your report?