Hello from my laptop and other strange tales

[Misanthropical]

My DH bought me a new computer over a month ago. Anyway, it has something wrong with it on the 35th day, so it's under company warantee and the company is sending recovery discs for it, so while I wait I'm using a laptop. A sweet kickin laptop! What was I saying? Yeah, so this laptop is mine till the recovery discs show up and then it becomes the family one.


Moving on, I got a letter today addressed to me with my maiden name (a name I haven't use in over 18 years). from a collections company in the state I grew up in, but left almost 20 years ago, so I was a bit

I called and the lady asks my name I truthfully tell her my name. She sighs at me and asks for my maiden name. She says it's a bill from some company I have never heard of, so I ask her how she my address, she claims she got it from the company I told her that she was lying since no one in that state has my address. I also inform her I was a bill collector so what ever bills were left over are long past the statue of limitations. She screams at me "UNLESS THERE IS A JUDGMENT".

She then tells me she will send me an itemized list of what I owe. I told her to go ahead and if I see anything hinky in it I will be talking to two State Attorney Generals about them. She hung up.

I freak out and look at all three credit reports and SHOCK OF ALL SHOCK! Nothing negative on any of my credit files, so she can kiss my big fat Irish/Bulgarian BUTT!

[Dreamstalker]

My grandmother's caretaker who is now living in/fixing up her house recently got a collections call about a speeding ticket in another state from 20+ years ago. The original ticket had been paid promptly, but he couldn't find any records of payment given that it was so long ago...if it was truly outstanding, he should not have been able to renew his license all these years

He had no choice but to pay the inflated amount (including fines and "late fees", the total was about $400+).

Mom's theory is, everyone wants their money so they are scraping the bottom of the barrel looking for any outstanding payments that they think they can get out of people.

[Misanthropical]

It was for a company I have never heard of. However there is a woman with my first name, just the last letter is different with my maiden name in that state. I'm figuring it's her bill. I still can not for the live of me figure out how they got my address, since no one has my current address in that state, unless they plugged the name in a search engine and just went with the first one that came up, instead of making sure they had the right person.

Even weirder is, there is a woman in PA with my first name, but the last letter is different with my married last name. How weird is that?

The company and the collection agency are not getting a penny out of me, since it's not my bill and not on my credit reports. However, I might be collecting from them for the collection laws they have already broke.

[Amina516]

There was a girl at my high school with my same exact name (which is weird, b/c I have a somewhat unique name). I then started getting ER bills in the mail on dates and tests that I had never had (like ultrasounds and urine pregnancy tests.) I called hospital biliing and they couldnt quite understand what I was trying to tell them. lol. After being transferred several times, they finally got it..I still got bills in the mail though and had to go through the same process all over. Thank GOD when I got married and my last name changed.

[malmalthekiller]

As a bill collector, I find that kind of strange. I've never seen a bill past a few years, the longest one I've seen was from 2002, and that was from some BMG/Columbia music house thing, and people still bitch that it isn't theirs (even though in most cases, people had to pay to be apart of such a club in the first place).

But there are outside services that are paid to look up people for bill collectors if they've moved or tried to disappear, but I don't really know how they operate.

But if it's not on your credit report, who cares?

Also, similar story, my mom has a fairly common name, and when my mom got a divorce her credit report was all messed up. turns out they mixed her up with someone that lived across town with TERRIBLE credit, and my mother's is spotless. She was livid.

She called them up and told them it wasn't her SS# and the listing for the address was one she never lived at (she's been at the same address since I was born, so 23 years), and the people on the other end were like, "oh...really? well...um." It took her MONTHS to get it taken off her credit.

[Andara Bledin]

It took her MONTHS to get it taken off her credit.

The problem is that you have to contact every reporting agency separately, or they'll just keep trading the info back and forth between each other.

^-.-^