Consumer complaint received 2016-04-27
Company: EQUIFAX, INC.
State: FL
Product: Credit reporting
Issue: Credit reporting company's investigation
Sub-issue: Problem with statement of dispute

Complaint:
Dear Sir or Madam : I am writing to dispute the following information in my file. 
I found on my credit report a collection filled by ( XXXX ) that is totally inappropriate because nobody ever tried to reach me in order to collect this debt. 
This is the second letter that I send you regarding the same issue because the first one was yesterday but contained an error on the date. 

This is really what happened : I was at the XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX for 6 hours for a XXXX XXXX, on XXXX 2014, then 15 days after I received the hospital bill for about XXXX dollars, then when I called to ask for a payment option, the person who assisted me told me that I had to send a low income application by mail, and that is what I did. 
Then I never received a response from the hospital. About one month after, I was concerned and I called the hospital again to ask what exactly happened with my low income application and what was the outcome of the application. And they told me that they received the letter and I did not have to pay anything because of my low income and that I was unemployed at that time. 
About 6 months after that, I received a call from XXXX asking me for about XXXX dollars that I was supposed to pay to the doctor 's office. XXXX, I asked them how can this be possible because the hospital had forgiven my debt, and the lady on the phone explained to me that the debt was forgiven by the hospital but not by the doctor 's office, which I never understood. 
Then I asked the lady over the phone, " why did you never try to reach me before? ", and her reply was, " yes, we tried to, but maybe there was an error on your address '', which I never understood, because the hospital was able to contact me by mail, and I was still living in the same address. So how could it be possible that the hospital provided them with a different address from the one on file? 
Then I said ok, can we make some payment arrangements because I did n't have a job at that time and I had a bad economical situation. And then I was surprised when she told me : " No, you have to pay, because I have access to your credit report and I am seeing here that you have credit cards for more than XXXX, so you can use this credit cards to pay the doctor 's bill, and then pay the card at your own pace. '' After that, I paid her by phone immediately, in the same call. 

This is why I am requesting that this collection be removed from my credit history, because this is affecting me, I 've never failed to pay any of my Bills on time, and I consider this is unfair that my credit score is being affected by the irresponsibility of the and/or the collection agency and/or the dr 's office ( XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX ), which did not make the minimum effort to contact you, they do not lose time on that, they just transfer the debt collection. If you check this agency on XXXX you can see that this collection agency have about XXXX disputes there for similar reasons, a lot of people who asked in the hospital if there would be any further bills after the insurance copayment. And were told that no. And also, two month ago I found another company, listing another collection in my credit report in regard to the same visit to the hospital in XX/XX/XXXX this time was ( XXXX XXXX ) collecting a debt of ( XXXX ), they was charging me XXXX of the XXXX. I paid them immediately and fortunately the remove this debt from the credit bureaus.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation