Never pay a debt collector with a debit card or a personal check you dont want them to have your banking info. Certified check or credit card only.
@Remedios wrote:I may need a whole giant roll of aluminum foil, but I don't trust collection agencies.
I am pretty sure some are trustworthy and play by the rules, but I would hate to find out the hard way which ones do not
You definitely do not need any foil. My brother did collections for about 10 years and he taught me to never, never, never write a personal check to ANY collection agency. He would advise all his friends to close out those accounts if they had already made that mistake.
He told me the biggest offenders were the ones that didn't record their phone calls. And out of the ones that did, the recordings were "accidentally erased" or recorded over really quick. It was your word against theirs whether or not you authorized multiple payments over the phone. Of course, they were just pulling the routing & account numbers off of the checks that you mailed for a one-time payment.
