Consumer complaint received 2015-04-20
Company: EVERGREEN PROFESSIONAL RECOVERIES, INC.
State: OR
Product: Debt collection
Sub-product: Medical
Issue: Cont'd attempts collect debt not owed
Sub-issue: Debt is not mine

Complaint:
I left XXXX XX/XX/XXXX. Due to several billing mistakes XXXX had already made up to that point -- part of the reason I left XXXX -- I verified with membership services at that time that I had absolutely no outstanding debts. 

XXXX and their collection subcontractor then began harassing me about erroneous charges -- totaling {$140.00} -- about six months later, in XX/XX/XXXX. These chargers stem from a mistake made by one of XXXX other subcontractors, a company called XXXX XXXX, a long time ago. I have contested these charges over the phone ; by certified mail ; and even in person ( at their XXXX campus membership services office ). XXXX -- as well as their collection company Evergreen Professional Recoveries -- has never once replied to my written contestations of these charges, and calling them on the phone accomplishes nothing. 

I am contacting the CFPB because it seems that this an unjustifiable -- and likely illegal -- shakedown by XXXX and their subcontractors. Even knowing that they have no cause to bill me, it is clear that once a charge is in their system, they ignore their own written billing policies about the contestation process, and just keep billing and threatening someones credit rating until the customer just gives up and sends them the money -- even if that money is clearly not owed to them. I have tried well over a dozen times to work this out with them, but each time I get the same endless runaround. It is now clear that this is not a mistake by a single individual at XXXX, so it must be XXXX & Evergreen Professional Recoveries company policy to ignore their own mistakes, and shakedown consumers for money, even if they realize later they are not owed it. 

My personal experience is that each time I respond to their phone calls, and contest the {$140.00} over the phone, I get an " oops '' from them, and they do stop harassing me for a few months, but it never lasts. A few months later it just starts up again from square one. I have spent so many hours and hours on the phone -- with both XXXX and their collection company Evergreen Professional -- dealing with this same {$140.00} fee over the last two years, that it feels like a part time job. Each time I call I am told the erroneous charges will be investigated, and that I would receive a written response soon. They never send me anything, and each time I call back they tell me they have no record of my previous calls and letters. 

I even drove an hour round trip into XXXX, and went into membership services office in person on XX/XX/XXXX, after failing to get any response on the phone or through the mail. The membership service representative told me that it looked to him like one of XXXX 's subcontractor ( XXXX XXXX ) had made a billing mistake a while back, but by the time XXXX XXXX noticed it ( nearly a year later ) it was too late to bill the Auto insurance carrier as they should have done ( I was hit by a drunk driver ). He then told me that it looked to him like those charges should never have been put on my account. The poor fellow spend over half an hour on the phone, while I sat in his office, watching him fax documents to his own billing department to try and get this taken care of. It was so ridiculous that I took a picture of him working ( which I still have ). In the end he was obviously incredibly frustrated with his own billing department, and told me that even he could n't get confirmation that it was taken care of for certain, but that hopefully it now would be. Several months later the harassment started up again, and once again they claimed they had no record of their own employee 's interdepartmental faxes and phone call. 

Again, this shakedown seems to be either company policy ; or it is a company wide level of negligence that -- since XXXX benefits from it financially -- they have no interest in fixing.

Company public response: Company chooses not to provide a public response
Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation