Rebuilding Your Credit

[sti_iki]

Hello fellow members,

I would like to apologize in advance for the length of this post and poorly structured sentences since English is not my mother tongue.

My score recently tanked from 779 to 657 (Equifax) due to collection account. How that account went to collection is interesting story, in October 2009 I had to move back to Serbia and since I take my finances very seriously I went on a quest to settle my bills leaving cell phone service as last one. I stopped by T-Mobile store and said that due to unexpected circumstances I have to cancel my plan on what the guy working there said that su*ks, lets call customer service and they might be able to waive the early termination fee. So we called from the stores phone and talked with customer service representative and she agreed to waive the fee and my only obligation would be to mail them a notarized photocopy of any sort of government issued identification from Serbia. She proceeded saying she will leave a flag and a note on my account why the fee is waived and then I made a payment in advance for full month of October over the phone. She said the service for my number will be stopped shortly and to consider this account closed that they are sorry to lose me as a customer and wished me a safe trip.

Fast forward several years there is a collection account on my reports from Midland Credit Management Inc. for $216 with T-Mobile as original creditor (for their early termination fee that they waived) reporting 11/2011 opening date and 09/2009 date of last activity. T-Mobile as a creditor never showed up on any of the reports all these years nor they ever reported me being late.

I almost forgot, I did send them notarized photocopy of my passport as they required.

I have gotten in touch with T-Mobile customer service and they are saying that there is no note on the account about the fee being waived but that they are confused how did I paid bill in advance and canceled my plan but was not charged the early termination fee. After 45 min. of "please hold" and "that is a good question" I have gotten nowhere with them.

Any opinion or advice how to handle this whole issue would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

sti_iki

[Tempted2Pull]

Contact T-Mobile corporate office by phone. They will most certainly pull the account from collections if indeed they agreed to waive the termination fees. 

[Shogun]

I agree, contact them.  You may have to move up the ladder a bit to be able to find someone who can actually do something.

[sti_iki]

Yes they did offered it and apparently it's nothing special, they do it for anyone moving anywhere in CONUS that is not covered by their network, if you are moving abroad or if you are in military and being deployed overseas.
Thank you for your advices, I will try discussing the issue with someone in upper management levels.