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My husband has been making payments to a collection agency regularly for the last year. He has always made these payments via the phone and has never received any paperwork from this company. This last month the phone number he has always used to contact the company was disconnected and he was unable to contact them or make his payment. He then contacted the hospital which had sent his account to this collection agency and was able to reach someone. He was then told that they were taking legal action against him because he had not made his payment. He tried to explain that he had no way to contact them and finally resorted to calling the hospital to try and get contact info. He told them he wanted to make his payment, he was not trying to avoid paying this bill and even to check his payment history which would show that he always paid on time and sometimes even more than he was supposed to. They told him they are still going to pursue him legally. Is this legal?
State/Country relating to Question: Oregon Already Tried: We tried reasoning with the collection agency. We thought for sure they would rather get their payment but they do not want to work with us at all. They were extremely rude.
Apparently, the hospital has not charged off the debt and sold it to the debt collector. That means you can still deal with the hospital and not the collection agency.
You may want to consider sending them a letter explaining that unless you can work out some reasonable payment plan in writing, that you will be forced to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection.
That will give the hospital the legal "magic words," that mean "figure something out, or be prepared to take nothing at all." Not that you are actually filing bankruptcy, but if the hospital thinks you are, then it knows that legal action will be a complete waste of time.
Hope this helps.
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The hospital would not discuss the bill with us and directed us to the collection agency. The collection agency demanded the payment in full and told us they would send it to their legal board if we did not pay it all immediately.
It doesn't really change the answer. You can send your letter to one and note that you are cc'ing the other, so that each knows you have communicated with the other in the same correspondence.
The botXXXXX XXXXXne is that the debt collector wants to get paid, as does the hospital. If you file bankruptcy, then neither will get anything at all. That's your leverage.
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