Debt

Not too long ago my mother received a letter telling her she owed money to a credit card company. Let me make this clear: my mother has never had a credit card. Ever. She hasn't had credit good enough to be approved since she filed for bankruptcy in 1986 following my sister's motorcycle accident. My mother has so many bounced checks from the late 80s and early 90s she can't even get a checking account. Furthermore, the letter claimed she lived at an address in 2002 that she hadn't lived in since 1997. My mother called these people. I happened to walk into the house from work while she was on the phone with them and heard her arguing with them.

Me: "Hang up the phone, right now."
Her, to them: "I've never heard of this credit card."
Me: "You can't reason with them. You're just giving them what they want. Hang up."
Her: I didn't even live there in 2002."
Me: "Hang up. Now."

Anyway, eventually she hung up. BUT, not before confirming her social security number to them. Horrified, I tried to explain to her that they were probably fishing for information so they could use her social security number. At this point she blows up at me, telling me she's tired of having to deal with these stupid companies. She thought it was terrible OF ME to interrupt her on the phone. I took the letter from her and searched for the "collection agency" on the internet and found out they had received an "F" from the Better Business Bureau (BBB). I told her this information and told her to call her attorney. She sent them a copy of the letter and we're still waiting to hear back from them.

Since that day, my parents have begun to receive a slew of fraudulent letters. A few days ago my father was sent a $1900 check because he had been chosen to be a secret shopper. Sensing something dodgy, I decided to look this company up on the BBB as well. No listing. I looked for a webpage about them. Nothing. I put directions to the address on their letterhead into mapquest and the address doesn't exist. I told my father that and told him he should report this letter to someone, such as the BBB. I told him he should ask them what to do with the check and he said he didn't have time to worry about it and he would just throw it away. When I asked him if he had applied to be a secret shopper (the letter thanked him for his application), he said no, he hadn't applied for anything. He had no idea where they had found his name.

We're getting phone calls now from a lot of anonymous, private, or "unknown name, unknown numbers" who call ten times a day and who claim to be collecting debts my mother has never heard of. She wants me to just get a different phone number (the number is in my name), but that's not going to stop this. Now, I'm not going to pretend I don't have a few debts (not as many as I once did - I paid off all of my credit cards but one and now I'm working on some medical bills and that credit card). But I can't make my mother see that when we begin getting letters from fraudulent companies, running from it isn't a viable option (it's never a viable option). She needs to report these phone numbers and these letters to someone - such as her attorney.

Sometimes it's hard to know what to do. The one credit card I still have a debt to gave me a pretty bad run around and outright lied to me. The worst part was I would get phone calls from two completely separate companies about the same account. When I would say, "You just called me yesterday and I've already made my payment," the caller would say, "We didn't call you yesterday." When I would argue or when I would offer the phone number that had called me the previous day they would just say it wasn't their problem. I would ask if it showed that I had made a payment and they would say "Yes, but we don't know anything about a phone call." I would read the phone number to them and they would claim they had never heard of that phone number. I began to distrust this company. One month when I had gone over the limit I called them to ask how much I would need to pay to get my account under the limit and not have to make another payment until the next month. They gave me an amount. I asked, again, if that was the amount I needed to get under the limit and not have to make another payment until the next month and was told, oh, no you'll have to make another payment after this one because you'll just go over the limit again. I became so angry they sent me to a supervisor, who told me they had closed my account the month before. When I spoke to a third person, they told me they had actually closed my account in April - even though I hadn't missed a payment. I had been over the limit for two months (even though every month I would pay more than the minimum payment). They closed my account even though I was always paying more than the minimum. When I called them out on this they told me they can actually close my account for any purpose without warning. Which is certainly what they did to me, because they closed my account in April and I wasn't aware of it until July.

Anyway, I feel overwhelmed because I'm trying really hard to pay my legitimate debts. I can't pay them all at once, so I'm working on each one as much as I can. It means I do have to ignore some while I work on others. I hate admitting that. Right now, I'm focusing on the medical bills mainly because they're fairly small and I think I can get them out of the way quickly. I worry about what others think about me. I know a majority of Americans have some kind of debt and I know I'm not alone, but when you talk to collection agencies they tend to treat you like you're the scum of the Earth because you owe money and can't just pay it all at once. I had one tell me that if I had a job I had the money to pay the debt. When I disputed that idea, reminding her that a part-time job isn't much money, she said paying this debt (the medical bill) should be my first priority, and that it was just as important as rent or food. I laughed out loud and said, no, it isn't. I'm sorry, but it just isn't. I offered to pay $10 a month just so I could be paying something and she said that wasn't acceptable. I told her that was all I had and she asked me if that meant I was refusing to pay this debt, and I had no option but to say, "If that's the way you want to look at it."

Now that a lot of my other debt has gone away, I can focus on paying more than $10 a month to that medical bill. My biggest worry right now is how to weed out the legit companies from the fraudulent ones. I now have two companies, yet again, calling me about the credit card from the extremely long paragraph earlier in this post. I have to wonder if I'll be paying that debt twice. Neither company has sent me a letter (and under the Fair Debt Collections Act they are required to do so). They just call, ten times a day, and I've started to ignore them because I don't know who to talk to. I've gone through a consolidation company once, so I've begun looking into another one, this time one that will sit down to counselling sessions and actually help me. I feel frustrated and also like some kind of failure or some kind of rat hiding in some kind of sewer. Am I a horrible person because I'm trying to do what I can with what I have? I know I created this problem. I try to convince myself that at least I'm doing something to fix it.