Consumer complaint received 2018-02-14
Company: AmeriCollect
State: WI
Product: Debt collection
Sub-product: Medical debt
Issue: Attempts to collect debt not owed
Sub-issue: Debt was paid

Complaint:
My wife and I have been experiencing continuous billing errors which resulted in our account being sent to multiple collection agencies by XXXX Hospital in XXXX, WI. Our insurance plan has a high deductible that must be met before they pay any medical bills. Once the deductible is met our bills are paid at 100 %. We set up a payment plan with XXXX Hospital in XX/XX/XXXX. The plan began in XX/XX/XXXX and the agreed upon monthly payment was  {$200.00}. We started experiencing billing problems immediately. We never received a XX/XX/XXXXstatement from XXXX Hospital. After establishing a payment plan and making monthly payments that were more than the agreed upon amount XXXX Hospital sent our account to four different collection agencies without notice. They lost two payments that we made. We sent the confirmation numbers from our bank to XXXX via e-mail and never received a response. As if that wasnt enough, we found out that the collection agencies reported this debt on our credit reports as negative without any notice to us. We requested a detailed list of the amounts owed so we could valid the debt. After reviewing the list we found a majority of the individual claims were already paid in full by us or the insurance company. We faxed our findings to the collections agencies for review. Americollect responded by stating Per our clients records, the payment was applied to a different balance ( s ) listed in their office. According to our records and our verification with the above client ( s ), the balance is still outstanding. 

They are taking payments made by our insurance company for a specific claim and applying them somewhere else. These claims that should have been paid in full are now showing up on our credit reports. This is very a FCRA violation with regards to medical debt under the Medical Debt Relief Act. 

Per XXXX Hospital policy, our balance should not have been sent to collections. We were making the monthly payments as stated above. XXXX Patient Collection Policy XXXX. XXXX, section XXXX : Placement of Bad Debt Accounts. Bad debt accounts of at least XXXX dollars may be placed with a Contracted Collection Agency any time after a Self-Pay Balance remains delinquent for four 28-day billing statement cycles. Even if we were past due at any point in time, we were never delinquent for four 28-day billing statement cycles. Therefore, they violated their own policy with regards to selling bad debt. We tried working this out with XXXX XXXX XXXX billing department. They promised us several times that we would receive a call from a financial advocate. We never received a phone call. 

The collection agencies that have been trying to contact us are Americollect, XXXX XXXX XXXX , XXXX XXXX XXXX and XXXX XXXX XXXX. These companies are harassing us and call us at all hours. We have told each one of them several times that they need to send the debt back to XXXX Hospital. Now they call and wont tell us who they are or what company they are calling from unless we give them the last four digits of our social security numbers. The only reason we know it is from a collection is agency is through caller ID. My wife and I have had our identity stolen and we will not under any circumstance give this information out unless we initiate the call. They have been rude to us as well. My wife is experiencing health problems and they have called us after XXXX XXXX  on a Sunday. This is creating a lot of stress for us and will not allow this to continue on. XXXX needs to get this issue resolved immediately and have the negative reporting removed from our credit reports within the next 30 days. We are done messing around with this and will get a lawyer to handle these violations if we have to.

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