Telus sent my name to collecting agency!

Question

I was living in Whistler and left for Banff. I called Telus and let them know I was moving. When I arrived in Banff I opened up a new account with Telus. I stayed for a little over a year in Banff. I moved back to Whistler and went to the bank to borrow money for a car. I found out I had my name in collections and that I owed 1700$ for a Telus bill. When Telus sent me the old invoice, I found out that they had been charging me without receiving payment for over a year! Not only that, it said it was for the basement suite, I did not live in the basement suite. When I contacted Telus they told me they have nothing to do with it because my debt has been sold to collections. Collections tells me that Telus has to buy my debt back, and it just keps bouncing back and forth, HELP!!!!

Answer 1

I don't know what Telus is but I assume it's cable or internet or something similar.  

Stop calling.   Send the collection agency a certified, return receipt letter telling the collector that this is not your debt.  Include that the charges are for an apartment that you never lived in and that during this year, you lived elsewhere.  CC Telus.

I also check your credit report (AnnualCreditReport.com) to see it this is showing up.  File a dispute with the credit bureaus.

Hopefully you have copies of your Telus bills for both locations, especially the final bill for the first location and the first bill for the second location.  The fact that you opened a new account at the new location works in your favor.  Start putting all the paperwork together so you have a papertrail.

In the future, make sure you get some kind of written confirmation when you close any account.  As you have discovered, phone call transactions can come back to haunt you.