Consumer complaint received 2019-11-21
Company: Merchants' Credit Guide Company
State: IL
Product: Credit reporting, credit repair services, or other personal consumer reports
Sub-product: Credit reporting
Issue: Problem with a credit reporting company's investigation into an existing problem
Sub-issue: Their investigation did not fix an error on your report

Complaint:
I am trying to avoid having to use an attorney and bringing action against them in the spirit of not complicating things for everyone. There is an easy fix to my issue. What has transpired here is really unfair and it is a classic example of why collection companies have such bad reputations. 

I owe quite a bit in medical bills, I had major health issues within my family and I had an XXXX  in XXXX XXXX I have never experienced something like this before and it was a very difficult and stresful situation to say the least. Allow me to elaborate on my situation. 

As I stated, I owe quite a bit in medical bills and Ive never run away from my obligations. I made a decision to start the process of resolving my medical bills. I had so many medical bills and multiple accounts reporting to my credit reports that I sent over a request to Merchants Credit Guide to validate all of them. I wanted a proper accounting of all of my medical bills so I can get around to how much was owed. The medical billing industry is a mess, it is a very confusing and hard to understand. That is why I took the action that I did. After that, I reached out and spoke with Mr. XXXX and explained my situation. I am a XXXX XXXX XXXX and I work about 65-75 hours per week. My business is doing well but I need to expand and I need a commercial loan to take the next step. The issue I'm running into is my credit score has been significantly affected by all of my medical collections. 

I relayed all of this information to Mr. XXXX and he was very helpful. We agreed to have him to tally up the total amount that I owed and we came to a deal. I would make a payment of {$12000.00} which I did and the rest of what is owed would be taken care of in monthly payments to the tune of {$300.00} per month. Mr. XXXX was very happy to get this size of a one time payment from me and was happy that we were able to work out a deal. His end of the deal would be to make sure that any collection account that is reporting to my credit reports would be deleted and that I would have no collection accounts from Merchants Credit Guide. I made the payment of {$12000.00} and we were on our way or so I thought. I kept monitoring my credit and saw that some collections were deleted but then to my surprise, I saw that 2 additional and new collections from Merchants Credit Guide were added to my credit report. 1 for {$23000.00} and another for {$6000.00}. I had no idea what was going on. I placed a call to Mr. XXXX to follow up and he assured me that the requests to remove the collection accounts from my credit reports were processed and that it was just a matter of time until the system updates. I waited another two weeks and those collections were still there. I reached out back again and that is when he looked further into it and then stated to me that those were medical bills that he did not see in the past when he looked it up. He stated that there was a name variation and that my former last name XXXX was what he hadnt searched under. There is a serious problem with this and he is not being truthful. 1. I have not received treatment under the last name XXXX in a very long time. 2 .He used my social security number to look up my unpaid medical bills. ( That should have given him access to everything as that number has always been the same ). 3. Merchants Credit Guide violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act when they reported these two new collection accounts to my credit reports because they never sent me the initial Dunning Letter that they are obligated to do so under law. This is a clear violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act and I am prepared to take legal action against them. 

Its disgraceful that I have been treated this way. Mr. XXXX knew how important it was for me to have a clean credit report and I made a significant payment ( {$12000.00} ) to start the process. We had an agreement and they did not honor their end. He was extremely negligent or deliberately deceptive in his dealings with me. I do not believe that he missed those medical collections. Something happened with the higher ups within this company and they made a decision to add those to my credit report since they already received a {$12000.00} payment from me. I agreed to make payments until all of my medical bills have been paid. I do not understand why they did this but it is absurd. 

I am asking that they do what is right and submit a request to delete the two new collection accounts and honor their part of the agreement that we have made. I will fulfill all of my obligations as promised.

Company public response: Company believes it acted appropriately as authorized by contract or law
Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation