OC and CA are not on the same page.

[Teddy]

A few weeks ago I noticed on my credit report is had a $167 dollar collection from Allied Interstate LLC. It was for a Dish network bill. (Cancellation fee from when we sold home 3 years ago). I called Allied and they simply said pay them 120 and it will go away or report a 0 balance atleast. Decided to call dish network and paid the full amount very quickly. Dish has no proof they ever sent the account to collections and can not find anywhere that says it was ever in collections. I asked them to recall the collection and they couldn't find anything. They sent me an account statement that shows no remarks of any type of collections and simply shows a 0 balance of where I paid. Allied is reporting to all three CRAs. I disputed them and experian deleted but the other two did not. 

Is this something that happens ? If dish is telling the truth, a CA "finds" debts and reports them and tries to get money out of you ? 

Kind of confused how to approach this issue. Maybe I paid dish to quickly. Not sure. 

[JoeRockhead]

Whether or not Dish is telling the truth is debatable.  It could be a matter of the account being turned over to collections and Dish never updating their records.  Either way,  unless you can get someone from Dish to provide a statement saying the account was  never placed with that CA, it's irrelevant. 

Either send a letter with proof of the zero balance to the collection agency informing them they are reporting inaccurate information and a demand for it's immediate correction, and/or open a new dispute with the two agencies still reporting the unpaid collection.

It's also not uncommon for updates to reporting to take 30 days or so to show up on your reports.

[bass_playr]

Usually I agree with Joerockhead, he posts a lot of great info in here.  But on this rare occasion, something looks off to me.  If Dish never updated their records, and you really did have an outstanding balance, then Dish would not show a 0 balance owed on their end, they would most likely still show that you had a balance owed.

The only way I can see where this may happen is if Dish actually sold the account, in which case they would show a 0 balance owed on their end.  But at that point, I cannot imagine they wouldn't show that they never sold it.  And if the CA claims it's collecting on behalf of Dish and not some third party debt buyer, then that would also support the idea that it was not sold off.  

If you can get a letter from Dish saying that there's no balance owed, that would be great to send to the CRAs when you dispute.  Even better if you can get Dish to send you a letter stating they never sent you to an outside debt collector.  You can dispute with the bureaus and send a copy of the letter showing that the OC does not show you owing anything.  Hopefully that would be sufficient to put an end to this.  Good on you for checking with the OC before paying what may very well be a fraudulent "debt".  

[BudC2]

Contact the CA with the info provided by Dish and request detailed info on the date they were contracted by Dish, if they purchased the debt from Dish (provide proof) or are collecting on behalf of Dust, anything else that may help you to reconcile the statements from the CA and Dish. If nothing adds up, provide all this to the reporting agencies for their investigation.