hospital collection

[skgship]

i am located in Texas. i owe a hospital bill in the amt of $825.00 I have been paying $25.00/mo. to a collection agency on this since Nov 2000. i missed my april 2001 payment. they called and i told them i would send it right away and that i would send may and june when i got paid the next time. i mailed my april pmt last week. they called to say that they are filing on me for not paying. i have never had anything filed on me before. i don't know what to expect. they want the entire amt due. i have no way of paying this. they said that they would get a judgement. do i go ahead and mail my may and june payment and hope they will accept it and not file or what?

 

[bigun]

Go ahead and mail the payments. I bet they'll accept them. Getting a judgement takes time. First they have to sue and you have a certain amoint of time to respond and then, there has to be a trial {small claims I'm sure}. That'll take several months. They just want to see if they can shake a lump sum out of you.

 

[JETX]

Ah, another 'debt collection' threat con!!!

Here are the REALITIES of this situation....
Unless the collection agency is actually the creditor (unusual) they have NO POWER to sue you or to file any legal process against you. They are only working as a 'for percentage' agent of the actual creditor and, as such, they are prohibited (in Texas) from any legal process against you. The only thing that they can do is to harass you (within the permissable allowed by the FDCPA) to try to get you to make ANY payment. Then, they keep an agreed percentage of the payment and forward the remainder on to the creditor.

Don't misunderstand, this is ONLY if they are NOT the creditor. And very few of the collection firms will actually become the creditor since it means that they would have had to purchase the debt from the original creditor. Some do, but they are very few.

You need to read what your FEDERAL rights are. Go to http://www.ftc.gov and read the FDCPA (Fair Debt Collections Practices Act). Also, take a look at http://www.budhibbs.com

Then, you can find out if they are the real credittor. If not, then their claims of actions that they are legally prohibited from doing (like threatening legal action) is a violation of FEDERAL law, you can file an online complaint at the above FTC website.

 

[skgship]

thanks so much for your advice. that was what i was planning on doing but i didn't know for sure if it would do any good. they made it sound like i was going to get served papers today. he told me not to worry that i would not do any jail time. because i have no experience with this, i have really been upset and worried today about all of this.
i worked for a company for 16yrs and they decided to close the business about a year ago. i had to take a job that was $20,000 less per year hence, my situation now.