I'll try to keep it short.
I was renting a small studio for barbering in a location with multiple studios. Thanks to the pandemic I had to shut down back in April. At the time I cleaned everything up and was in communication with the manager. I asked him what I owed for early termination of the lease, because I wanted to take care of it. He said he would send me a move out statement with whatever remaining balance I owed.
Months passed and I never heard anything. Finally in October while I was driving from the west coast to the east coast to move I got an email.
In the email he included the move out statement and a message saying that if I got back to him within three days they would set up a payment plan for me if I needed. Well I was on the road and not checking my old business email, so I saw it five days after it was sent. I wrote to him and he said it was out of his hands and he would forward my request for a payment plan to the financial department. Five more days past and I got a letter from a collection agency at my new home. That's ten days after the date on the move out statement. That means it was sent out less than ten days after.
This was in October. We are obviously almost in 2021 and I have spent all of this time trying to call the company and email and even reached out to the owner about a month ago. He actually seemed like he cared, but then basically said he couldn't help since it was sent to collections. Now I have his financial guy telling me that he is "looking in to it", but that I should pay the collection.
No matter how many times I tell him what happened and that I have been trying for months to pay them directly he just keeps playing dumb. I am doing this all via email so that I have it in writing, so I am guessing that's part of him acting like he doesn't know anything about anything.
I spent years rebuilding my credit from when I was young and dumb. As much as I hate the idea of a collection on my report I would accept it if I indeed avoided paying the company. I'm guessing I am SOL, but this board helped me years ago, so I thought I would give it a shot. I hate the idea of this dumb company costing me in multiple ways for seven years.
