I apologize in advance for the long winded post but hopefully someone can help me with my dilema!
Ok, so last month I received an alert that a new collection was added to all 3 bureaus. I was shocked because I've been working hard on reparing my credit for the past year and I know I haven't gotten behind on any bills! I reviewed the collection and turns out it was for an urgent care visit I made in August of last year. I sent a letter to the corporate headquarters asking them if they would consider taking back the bill and I would pay them directly for the original amount owed. No dice. I got back a rude letter stating it was in the hands of the collection agency and that I would have to pay the collection agency directly (original bill was for $156 but with tacked on fees they were charging me $211). I was on the verge of calling the collection agency and trying to get a PFD going but something told me to check my insurance to see why the claim was denied. My search led me to find that the urgent care place never even billed my insurance! I decided to try calling the local urgent care place I made the original visit to and thankfully got the most helpful billing person. I explained the situation about never receiving a bill from them (bc I honestly never had) and about them not billing my insurance (bc I know I gave them the correct card and I've never had a lapse in coverage so any mistake made must have been on their end). Turns out after some digging the billing person said they must have input my ID number wrong because when they billed it back in August it came back as the insurance company couldn't verify me. Instead of calling me about it he said they (allegedly) sent me bills about the debt. I politely told him I never received any bills from them and asked if they could just please rebill my insurance since they now had all the correct insurance information on me. This all happened yesterday. Today they called and told me that when they tried to rebill the claim was denied since the original visit was past the 6 month mark. The billing person apologized and said since it was their billing mistake they would take the bill back from the collection agency and I could just pay the office the $156 directly. My question is, if I do this and get a receipt saying that the bill has been squared away with the OC, can I then dispute the collection agency's claim on all 3 of my credit reports? If so, what would I put down as the basis for the dispute? That the CA no longer has collection authority? Would I also need to attach proof of payment to the OC with my dispute? I plan on going by the urgent care place tomorrow and writing a check for the $156 so how long should I wait to dispute with the credit bureaus? The person I spoke with told me they would inform the collection agency that they were no longer able to collect on the debt but I don't want to just wait around to see if the CA just takes it off my credit report themselves. I want to get this collection off my reports ASAP! It brought my TU score down over 40 points and hit me with around a 20 point drop on my EQ and EX! HELP!!
