That's very true, Brammy. Unfortunately, up until now, the system has been set up so paying it wouldn't have helped me at all (it would have prevented further collections, but no collection agency could remove the report from the original creditor). I had tried to work with the original creditor and their internal collections department, but my financial situation at the time (and my knowledge of credit reporting in general) was very limited, and they might as well have been asking for $10 million. Over the ensuing years, this particular debt passed into and out of the hands of at least three collection agencies who didn't make any attempt to collect beyond the initial dunning letter, so I assumed it either wasn't worth their time or the "predator had no teeth" (ie - there wasn't much they could legally do, or there was some statute of limitations I was unaware of). This collection agency, which probably purchased this debt for $20 (I'm exaggerating a bit, but who knows), has now decided to get all aggressive because they *know* I'm backed against a wall and will likely cough up something just to make it go away. I don't think that's an ethical business practice at all.
I do acknowledge that I owed the debt, and I do acknowledge that the original creditor, and their designated representatives, had the authority and right to collect on the debt. They decided it was better to charge it off and eat the loss than to take any money from me. What peeves me is that now this debt shows *twice* on my credit report (double jeopardy, IMO), and this collection agency bottom-feeder has reported it as being 120+ past due 4 or more times, even though I have never entered any kind of payment agreement with them (and thus, I couldn't possibly have been late), and the late payments they're talking about have *already* been reported by the original creditor. I also fail to see how this agency has the authority and right to collect on an account which I never opened with them, and one in which they are not designated representatives of the original creditor (I know that it is *legal*, but I don't think it's *ethical*, and I think it runs counter to the "heart" of the law, as it were).
Beyond any of that, I don't see how, logically (which, I know the law and logic don't necessarily go hand-in-hand) Providian Financial (now WAMU) can assign a collection agency's, collection agency's, collection agency's, collection agency to act on their behalf when they never had contact with them, and the debt itself was merely sold on the open market. If this collector is going to continue to try to collect the debt owed to a different company, I say there should be some sort of business arrangement where that agency is acting on the original creditor's behalf, and they should actually be able to *do* something about the original creditor's reporting of the debt (so that I don't have the same debt reported multiple times). The way the system is set up now, well, heck, Billy-Joe-Bob-Gene's Big 'ol Doggone Collection Agency, LLC can report the bad debt, sell it to whoever wants it, they report it, rinse, repeat, ad nauseum, until the same debt is reported five different times on the same credit report. It artificially lowers the consumer's credit score because it looks like this person has 5 bad accounts when they really only have 1. That just doesn't sit right with me at all...
Sorry about the rambling, I just got into a "thing"...
