Hey guys I'm new here and recently started pulling up my credit reports, checking for errors to improve my score. I did a lot of investigation by calling the collection agency and T-Mobile. This is a long article but please help me if you can.
Here's the back story:
A collections agency has two collections under my credit report from T-Mobile. I've only had 1 account with T-Mobile and in July 2009 I had a billing issue over overages and left to AT&T. I knew it was sent to collections but refused to pay it. I honestly don't remember if I was getting collection calls back then and I didn't here anything about it until the end of 2011, maybe October Novemberish. I recieved multiple calls from the collection agency about paying what I owed. I had told them that I planned on paying it when I had the money. So in January, I called and said I was going to pay in the beginning of February. They tried to get me to put a card on file which I declined. But I did call the first week of Feb 2012 and settled on it paying $50 dollars less then the balance. They did report it as a paid collection and then I thought everything was fine.
About a month later I started recieving phone calls from the same collection agency saying I owed them money. I said I just paid and I'm not paying it again. I know now that I should of requested the debt to be validated but I didn't do that. Instead, I chose to ignore it again and they stopped calling me. In I believe November 2012 they started blowing up my phone again. I don't know what they started calling me again when I said I wasn't going to pay it. But I did pick up one time and I told them I'll decide what I'm going to do, whether to pay or dispute. Personal issues were going on at that time and didn't feel like dealing with it then. So after a month of harrassing calls they finally stopped calling me.
Now I want to improve my credit and FICO score. I pulled up my credit report and there shows one paid collection with 0 balance and another with a one.
Btw the collection agency is Midland Funding LLC. Recently I called them asking about the second account and requested all the information related to the account as well as the old one. Also, if it matters, when asking about the dates that I'm being billed for the guy kept changing the dates as well as other information I was requesting(sounding shady).
So here's all the shady parts. It turns out both collections accounts have different account numbers from T-Mobile BUT the phone associated with both accounts are from the same number. So I called T-Mobile and got some info.They did verify the accounts were in existance but couldn't give me any information since they sold it Midland. It turns out that the account that I had paid to the collection agency, the same account they said it was what I owed T-Mobile for my overages when I left in July 2009(the one I paid in Feb 2012), was created in July 26, 2009 and closed in Oct 31, 2009. The amount was $450. Now the current account they say I owe them now, was created in Dec 2006 and close date Jul 2009 and I owe about $500 now. This looks like the original account that I had had and they had me pay an account that I was told was all I told T-mobile when I left.
I never authorized changing the in account number, which they cannot do without owner consent. I paid a balance that I thought cleared everything up. Midland says the accounts are legit. Is it legal for me to be charged for a balance I owed for T-mobile twice and in different amounts? It looks like they closed my original account and created another. What should I do?
