This hasn't gone to a collection company as of yet. I want to prevent that if at all possible. Let me give you the scenario and have you advise me one what you think I should do before it gets to the point of collections.
I have a HELP (hospital expense loan program) account that I have been paying on for quite a while. Last month, I took a long look at the bill and noticed that the payments for for 6/08, 7/08, 9/08, 10/08, 12/08 & 1/09 were missing. I pay all my bills online through my bank, so I first verified that those payments were paid and subsequently cleared. Of course, they were. So, when I called and spoke with the company about the missing payments, I was advised that for some reason, they had 2 accounts going on me and sometimes a payment would be applied to one account and other times a payment would be applied to a different account (mind you, I only receive one bill per month with these people and under no conditions should I have 2 accounts - when you add stuff to it, they do what is called "add a loan" and it adds whatever hospital bill you have to the previous account that you have.) The person I spoke with was confused and asked for a few days to get it taken care of and straightened out.
I had another question and immediately called back and the person that answered the phone that time after I explained to him what was going on, basically interrupted me, said he knew about my account and that he'd been working to get it fixed for sometime and that it'd be fixed by the next billing cycle. I figured at that time it was taken care of.
Fast forward to the next billing cycle - I received the bill today, still the payments are missing. I called and spoke to a woman this time and was advised that person that was supposedly working on my account wouldn't be back until tomorrow and that she had no idea what was going on with my account. I advised her at that time that I would not be making a payment until they could verify the amount of debt and what was actually owed on the account. She advised that she understood and that wouldn't be a problem.
However, this will be the second month in a row that I have not made a payment now. How do I stop this from becoming a bigger issue that it already is?
Thanks for all your advice, I really need it with this situation!
