I had to cancel my Pacific Bell residential phone service because after selling my home in 2003, I was moving to an area where Pacific Bell did not provide residential phone service for it's customers.
In order to cancel my PacBell service, the PacBell's customer service rep told my wife that she had to pay the bill over the phone in order to prevent it from going into collections. She had them debit the balance due out of our checking account.
Guess what? The balance my wife paid over the phone was still sent to collections. I found out about this almost two years later when I was in the process of getting another mortgage, and my fico score dropped to the low 600s as a result of the new collections added to my credit report.
What makes this so disturbing is that when I notified the Collection Company (Asset Collection Company to be exact), and faxed them proof that the bill was paid or debited from my checking account, they would not remove the collection. They then wanted me to go to a notary to have a form signed saying that the statement showing that the bill was paid or debited from my checking out was truely mine. I was then thinking kiss my black...bleep..bleep..bleep.
I disputed that collection bill on all 3 CBs and still no results. Every 3 to 6 months, they update this collection file on my credit report, but it doesn't ding me as bad as it did when they first started reporting it in July 2003. I am going to sit tight and let it automatically remove from my profile in 2010, because if I try to pay it or settle it, it will ding me and update as now a paid collection. NOW I DON'T WANT THAT.
Not to be too wordy (ha, ha, ha, ha) but this also happened to my mother in law when she cancelled her residential phone service with Verizon. This is a woman who has an 825 Fico score, never was late on any of her bills, yet Verizon says that she didn't pay her last bill too. I am seeing a pattern here with phone companies and cancelling your service with them.
