In Greek mythology, Sisyphus had this accursed rock he had to keep pushing up a hill. My rock appears to be a screwed-up piece of debt that keeps re-appearing in my life. I thought Id killed this thing off a couple of years ago, but its back. Short version of the story: somewhere in the bowels of AT&T, my Social Security number and home phone number got connected with somebody elses account. Many years ago, I got calls from AT&T, saying my account was past due. When I politely informed them that this wasnt the case, they gave me the name of the person with the past-due account. Not me, I said, and Id appreciate it if youd remove my phone number from that account. We cant do that, they said, because its not your account. And thus we went through the looking glass. For a few years, all was quiet. I assumed the person-not-named-me had paid the AT&T bill and never really gave it another thought. Until two years ago, when in the midst of refinancing a mortgage, the lender told me there was a problem: I had an account in collection. I tracked down my credit report, and there it was: AT&T was listed as the creditor and a company from Florida was trying to collect $377. It took me several days to clean this all up (after all, it wasnt my name on the account), we did the refi, and life sailed on. Until the other day, when I found that darned rock at the bottom of the hill again: another ding on my credit report. Same $377 AT&T debt, but a different debt collector. Im fighting it, of course, and this time, Im filing complaints against both debt collection companies with the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Its clear what happened: the bottom-feeders who buy and sell debt for pennies on the dollar knowingly sold a debt they KNEW was flawed to somebody else. Consumer protection agencies have known about this problem for years. Theres a relatively simple fix: if debt carried a unique identifying number (the way a car has a VIN number or real estate has an address) and debt collectors were forced to use a national registry, it would be easy enough to see if a particular debt had been paid (or, like mine, successfully challenged as erroneous). Im not holding my breath. And Im fully expecting to find that rock at the bottom of the hill again some day in the future.
Posted on: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 12:10:01 +0000