Be Nice = Get Nice
I received a phone call from a collection agency saying I owed $700+ on my health insurance from back in 2016. Sure that it was a mistake, I told the gentleman (I use the term only out of politeness) that it was a mistake and that I have never missed a premium payment.
I am sure he is used to dealing with deadbeats (I use the term only out of rudeness) all day and that he gets a ton of excuses and very little in the way of payment. He proceeded to cop a major attitude with me, “You owe the money. I don’t want excuses. I just need to know how you intend to pay your debt.”
As you can guess, I was caught off-guard by his tone and said (politely,) “I’m sorry. You have bad information. I will not be paying you anything. I will call the insurance company and straighten it out.”
Expecting him to just hang up or at least harrumph, he instead said, “They did a bunch of audits and discovered underpayments so you owe the money. Would you like to pay with…”
“Whoa there,” I said. “Now you sound like a scammer.  Does this actually work? Browbeating people into giving you payments just to stop the harassment?”Â
I repeated, “I will call the insurance company. Good bye.”
Well, I called the insurance company and got a very pleasant lady and told her that I was called by collections saying I owed a back amount. I told her that I know all the payments had been made.
She got my info, looked it up and said, “Yes, it does appear you owe $700+ dollar. Let me look into the detail.”
She did her research and discovered that it was a misappropriation of payments and credits and that not only did I not owe anything, but I was due back about $300. She put in a request to expedite the issue and told me I would have it in 3-5 business days.
She asked if she could help me with anything else and I responded, “Wait… before you go. Â Let me just say you absolutely rock!“
She got a big giggle out of that and we both hung up quite happy.
by Chris Doelle
Lol. Thank you for sharing this experience. Thank God there were no any collection agencies calling me since these past few months. However, I read sooo many reports and complaints written by people on the internet regarding debt collectors (legit and scams). I think we should know our rights, and what are the laws that rule this collection matter.