Medical debt due to wrong billing address.

[cnelson]

I recently pulled my credit report. I saw I had a failure to pay on a 80 dollar medical bill from a eye doctor. I did not remember getting any notices in the mail. I got the number off the credit report and called the connection agency. I took care of the bill, paid it in full. Then when going over my information with them, they had the wrong address. A typo on my street name, thus explaining why I never got any bills. I told them I wanted to make sure the mistake was noted on my credit report. She assured me that it would be submitted for deletion and be gone within two weeks. Does this sound right? Is there any other recourse I have? Thanks, Chris.

[madmann26]

Sounds kosher. Even better since they said they would delete it and you didn't ask.

[GregB]

If they mailed the bill to the wrong address that doesn't remove your requirement to pay. This is why it is best that you follow up with any service providers and make sure that you don't have a balance. If that helped in any way, you can imagine how many people would give the wrong address.

A note on a credit report that says it was mailed to the wrong address is completely meaningless. It might make you feel better but will mean nothing positive to any potential lender.

If the address was wrong, that may help motivate the CA to remove the collection instead of just marking it paid. They are not required to remove it and you will probably get the best result by being very nice, basically asking for GW in having it removed. Hope it works out well for you.

[cnelson]

Thank you for the replies. Yes I understand I should have followed up, no doubt a bit of a lapse on my part. It is just frustrating because obviously I was not trying to mislead them by giving my wrong address, along the line somewhere there was a mistake made.

On a side note, if I pull my report again to see if it is still listed is that going to effect my credit score at all?

[Shogun]

Sounds good...  just make sure you follow up with it.

[cnelson]

I will make sure I do that. Is it a good idea to pull another report to see if it is still listed? Or could that impact my score? I have been using freecreditscore and the score tracker shows that without that account,  a big bump in my score. Either way I still want to make sure I take care of it. How long would something like that take to get off my report if they submit it for deltion?

[Shogun]

Maximum of 30-45 days, but could be considerably sooner.  It does not hurt your score at all to pull your own report.