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I had a account with American Express and was laid off in August and got behind on my payments so american express sent me to a collections agency which was Nationwide Credit at that time the sent me a letter asking if i would like to make payment arrangeents or do a settlement on the account so i did a settlement with them and sent them the money the same day i sis the settlement which was Jult 21st i received a call from First Source another collection agency stating that they are now handling my account I told them that i had just setled my account with Nationwide credit and they said that i need to dal with them now and i told them that i never received any letters from there company and that i would not talk to them anymore well i received at least 2 calls a day from this company and yesterday i received a statement from them showing that i owe American express the full amount and if i want to deal with this issue i need to call them. I dont know what to do?????
Optional Information: State/Country of Question: California Already Tried: Just talking back and forth with each company ad Nationwide Credit said dfor me not to worry about anything that it is all settled and they would be sending me a letter stating that the settlement was approved and cleared but i haven't received it yet. Nationwide credit stated that the reason the other company is calling me is that after the 21st of July they would of been handling my account but since i settled onthe the 21st with Nationwide it was still there account as it was i didn't even know there was another collections agency involved.
If you have written documentation showing that you agreed to pay $X in exchange for a release of further liability, and you actually paid $X in reliance upon the agreed-to settlement offer, then you could use that to defend against any future debt collector's law suit. Moreover, if another debt collector were to make a negative credit report against you, you could use the documentation to dispute the report and have it removed from your credit report.
If you have nothing but your cancelled check, then you may still be able to convince a court that you reasonably relied upon what appeared to you to be a settlement and release offer, and more than likely, a court would side with you.
In sum, it really depends on the quality of your evidence proving your argument that you fully settled the debt, and that this new debt collection attempt is either based on incorrect info -- or a Fraud.
But, for all of the above, you'll have to fight about it in court.
You can also complain to the Federal Trade Commission, at: https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/.
Hope this helps.
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