Consumer complaint received 2022-08-19
Product: Debt collection — Medical debt
Issue: Attempts to collect debt not owed — Debt was paid
Company: USCB, Inc. (CA)

In XX/XX/XXXX I went to the emergency room after XXXX XXXX XXXX while cooking. At the time I didn't have medical insurance with my employer due to the fact that I had just started a new job and our HR representative had dropped the ball on processing my medical benefits on time. I was employed in XX/XX/XXXX and still didnt have my medical benefits by XX/XX/XXXX when the accident happened. This is in despite of having followed up with my employers HR representative multiple times. It would be my luck that I would be medically uninsured at the time of my emergency visit. *Of note, I was also in the process of obtaining medical benefits from the VA but the paperwork was still being processed and I didnt have a Member ID at the time. These days I have dual insurance with the VA and my employer. 

When I checked into XXXX XXXX XXXX in XXXX XXXX, CA the hospital took my personal information and gave me an orange piece of paper with numbers to call once I got my future bill because I was uninsured. She informed me that I would be billed of an unknown amount at a later time and that was the extent of our interaction. About 30 min later my vitals were taken and I got XXXX  and went home to wait for the bill. 

In the meantime, once I returned home from the hospital, I connected with my employer ( that same night ) and told them about my trip to the emergency room. I also told them that I needed my paperwork processed once and for all. In response, my employer said they would work with me and get my medical benefits processed in a timely manner. However, they couldnt guarantee that the benefits would take effect in time to help pay for my pending emergency bill. This was something that I feared but still wanted to go for it anyways. 

Ultimately there was a period where I wasnt sure how much the hospital bill was going to be, ( because I was still waiting for it to arrive ), while also waiting on my employer to give me the notice on when my benefits would take into effect. Eventually, I got my *hospital bills in the mail and shortly before/or after ( I dont know exactly when ) I had finally received my medical benefits and was able to provide the hospital with my insurance information. Upon giving the hospital my medical insurance information, I was transparent with them in explaining that I had no clue whether or not theyd take my medical insurance information or not but I wanted them to try. I was hoping that they would take something into consideration and in fact, they said they would! The very fact that the hospital said they would look into my insurance after my precarious situation was my fatal flaw. The hospital never once spoke to my insurance throughout the entire billing and late notices and even collections process. BUT more on that later on in the story Of note : I received 2 hospital bills 1. for Emergency Room and 2. for the Doctors visit. Unfortunately, I ONLY have 1 medical bill remaining from that time, because all others were lost in a recent move from the XXXX XXXX, CA to XXXX, CA. Admittedly, Im going off of my memory, but I dont have exact dates and figures aside from that one bill. 

Once documenting my medical insurance information, they said they would now send my bill to their insurance department and that I no longer needed to worry about the bill until they had completed their process of coordinating with my insurance. At this point, I was so thankful that they were going to reach out to my insurance and see what they could do! Now at this point in the story, I want to make clear that before getting off of the phone with XXXX billing department I asked whether I should simply pay the bill right then, while they conducted their insurance investigation. But the representative assured me that I should NOT pay my bill while theyre working the issue and to ignore delinquent notices. I was VERY hesitant to do this and called XXXX billing department multiple times to confirm this direction. Repeatedly they informed me NOT to pay the bill. As this went on for months, I saw my bills climb and climb. 

The bills climbed until one day I received a notice that my medical insurance had kicked in and there was a reduction in my bill. Or at least thats how it was portrayed on my medical bill. From here I was ready to pay until I had research that the VA could pay for this emergency medical expense, but I never followed through with this action. Additionally, I was confused that they bill didnt have a due date. I was also confused about the billing amount. It appeared that the hospital had let my bill climb and climb and made a deduction after all the fees were added. At the time this didnt make sense because I thought the additional fees were paused until the insurance investigation was completed? Why was my final bill higher after making the deductions from my medical insurance? Spoiler alert : It was because XXXX never attempted to run my insurance and were ( unknown to me ) treating me like a standard uninsured member, regardless of the fact that I had already given them my medical policy number. With more than enough I my plate, I put this task on the back burner and didnt address it further. 

In XX/XX/XXXX I was denied XXXX XXXX loan and saw that my XXXX XXXX XXXXpped from XXXX to XXXX with 3 separate collections pulls from USCB America in the amounts of ( {$340.00} ) ( {$240.00} ) and ( {$600.00} ). I was able to find out that XXXX Billing sent my debt to collections in XX/XX/XXXX and USCB reported my debt to the credit bureaus in XX/XX/XXXX for the ( {$340.00} ) and ( {$240.00} ) alleged debts and in XX/XX/XXXX for the ( {$600.00} ) alleged debt. Luckily, I still had the exact bill for the {$600.00} alleged debt that I was seeing on my XXXX credit report which was exactly {$600.00} dated on XX/XX/XXXX and I paid it on XX/XX/XXXX directly to XXXX as the original creditor. Given that I still had the {$600.00} bill I was able to pay as a guest using the account number that was given to me on the top right portion of the bill. 

I then asked XXXX to provide me with an itemized bill of my other outstanding debts that I had seen on my credit report but they ABSOLUTELY refused to give me this information. They informed me that their systems no longer allow them to see the bill and that they were unable to give me a breakdown of what I actually owed. They also informed me that I had to go to collections only if I wanted to see a breakdown of my bill. On XX/XX/XXXX or XXXX XXXX I was able to get a XXXX billing representative to admit to me that I still owed {$590.00} with the same account number as the {$600.00} bill. So, while I wasnt able to get an itemized bill, this representative gave me nearly the exact number that I was seeing on my credit report ( {$340.00} + {$240.00} ) = {$580.00}. In theory I couldve have just sent {$590.00} over to XXXX through guest pay again, but I wanted more information. 

On XX/XX/XXXX, I reached out to my medical insurance provider at the time of this emergency which was XXXX XXXX to see if I could get information on what they actually paid for. It wasnt until that then that I was informed that XXXX XXXX had actually never reached out to them at any point. They in fact never even received any sort of denial of services letter from my medical insurance provider. With this information I called XXXX back and notified them that they failed to ever follow through with checking into my insurance. At this point, the representative said that she would resend my bills to their internal insurance department to then get reviewed. A few minutes later XXXX contacted my medical insurance company to ask 1. If I was insured in XX/XX/XXXX? And 2. When was my effective date of insurance. At that point, my insurance said my effective date was XX/XX/XXXX. Armed with this new information, XXXX called me back to say that I need to work with collections and completely ignored the fact that their original bills and late fees was actually a total guess. Had I not pointed out to them that they didnt do their job right the first time, they still would have never followed up with XXXX XXXX XXXX As a side note, I was also able to get a second representative to admit to me that they indeed received my medical insurance information before my first bills were due and that the notes in the system were strange and she wasnt sure why it had gone straight to collections and not to the insurance department. 

After this whirlwind of a day, I used the information that the XXXX representative had given me about the {$590.00} outstanding debt and the account number to pay as a guest at XXXX XXXX on XX/XX/XXXX. This transaction was to clear the {$340.00} and {$240.00} debts that I have no clue what they are for. Sometime later that evening, before I went to bed, I looked at my XXXX credit report which still showed USCB America reporting {$340.00}, {$240.00} and {$600.00} as alleged debts. This morning around XXXX XXXX I woke up and saw that my {$600.00} debt had changed to {$67.00} with another delinquent hit for the month of XX/XX/XXXX saying that the balance was updated on XX/XX/XXXX. And the {$240.00} debt had been completely removed but the {$340.00} debt still shows up as unpaid with another delinquent hit to my credit score for the month of XX/XX/XXXX also saying that the balance was updated on XX/XX/XXXX. I'm not sure how the collections agency came to the conclusion of updating my information on XX/XX/XXXX but I do know that I was in communications with XXXX billing very heavily on XX/XX/XXXX, XXXX and XXXX XXXX. It seems very peculiar that the collections agency allegedly updated this information only 1 day before all my heavy investigative work. 

At this point Im not sure what USCB America is going to report next on my credit score. It seems like all just a surprise to me! And since the original creditor wont release any of my original billing information, Im essentially at the mercy of the USCB America collections agency to just keep billing me and hitting my credit score.