Hello everyone, wanted to share a bad experience I had while tryign to do the right thing....
About 2 months ago I was in the process of buying a home, I knew I had some debt out there that I hadn't paid and in fear of it magically popping up on my credit right before closing I set out to pay off any outstanding bills I owed which one of them was some money owed to a bank for a check I cashed that bounced and I was stuck with the bill.... That's another story on it's own but moving on!
I had been receiving emails from a company called "Penderson Mediation Group" and they were claiming to collect a debt from the bank i owed money too so I called them, they put me on hold MULTIPLE times for a long duration, and they asked me to verify all kinds of information like social/DOB/etc. etc....(1st sign) then they told me I owed 1k, I told them that was BS and the amount was only 700, so they put me on hold again for about 5 minutes and again and again.... they didn't seem to know **bleep** they were doing(2nd sign) After a while they said ok, we will take 700, I told them I only had about 200 bucks to give them at the moment but could pay the rest in 10 days, AGAIN I was put on hold and the person came back and asked if I could do 250, if I did 250 they will knock off 200 dollars from the total bill and will only collect 250 again in 10 days(3rd sign) After I agreed they put me on another long hold then they said they needed to record my conversation and made me repeat several times that I would pay and not file dispute through my credit card.....
LONG Story short, after the call I felt like something was wrong... I called the bank I owed money to and they told me that penderson mediation group had no affiliation with them and they gave me a different company that owened the debt 
Worst feeling in the world, luckily I was able to file a dispute with chase and they got me my money back hahahaha, suckers! Now I live in constant fear that my identity will be stolen....
My step-mother owed some companies money, and tons of other companies jumped in trying to scare her into paying, it was absurd. Always watch for bandwagon jumpers!
