Does it ruin my credit score?

Question

I got a letter from collection agency for unpaid hospital bill. However, I've never received the bill from the hospital, never. I called the hospital and they told me there is no record shown that they sent me the statement (or bill). So they forgot to send me a bill, and after 6 months later, they sent me to collection agency....??? How could this happen? The hospital personnel told me that this will not affect my credit score, Can I trust them?

Answer 1

Do NOT trust the hospital personnel.  Go see the manager in charge of billing.  Tell him/her that you want the collection pulled back by the hospital and billed to you like it should have been.  Document everything in writing.  The hospital should give you a letter stating that the collection was due to their error.  With that, you can dispute it off your credit record.

Unfortunately, this is all too common.  Healthcare billing functions are very often incompetent.

Answer 2

i would call ur insurance agency, but its goign to show up. U should also put ur credit report and see whatit says

Answer 3

No. You cannot trust them.  If it has gone to collections, it's possible that it will appear on your credit.  Call the collections agency, explain the issue to them, then do so in writing as well.  Find out if they have referred it to the credit bureaus (usually the collection agency will do this, not the hospital).   If it has been in collections a brief time, it may not have hit the bureaus yet, but if it's been with them over thirty days, it probably has.  

Tell them you will pay it off immediately but you expect them to keep it in-house and not send it to the credit bureaus due to the hospital's s***w up.  Make sure you put this in writing to the collections agency as well as verbally (over the phone).

Answer 4

Unpaid hospital collections do appear on your Credit Report. Depending on what score you are pulling - Equifax, etc, will be able to give you the information as to more specifics on the unpaid bill once you contact them. You will need to "push the issue" with the Hospital however, to make sure that if it is an error in their billing that it does get removed from your credit.

Answer 5

Probably you have some wrong items in your credit report.

You can use credit repair agency to fix your credit - for example this one - http://freecreditreport.hotusa.org - They can clean lots of bad stuff from your credit report - and do it much faster than yourself, so your credit will go up fast.