How hard is it to put 2 and 2 together?
Thursday Dec 18, 2008
This morning I received a registered letter from a collection agent, urging me to pay a hospital bill dating back to June 2008. Even though I am the first to admit that some payments might slip my attention, a hospital bill is not one of them, so I was intrigued. My first reaction was to immediately pay to avoid further legal costs, but then I started thinking and I really could not recollect seeing this invoice.
So I called the hospital and asked them to confirm the amount and for what the invoice was. After some questions we found out that this invoice was sent to my previous address. As I did notify the hospital of my new address (my wife and I even were at the hospital registration before this invoice), the hospital agreed to waive all the extra costs such as interest and collection agent fees, providing I pay the invoice, which I did today.
Then I started thinking some more. So the hospital sent this invoice, with my previous address, to this collection agent. He obtains my current address from the official registry, and sends me the registered letter. Now shouldn't that already ring a bell at the collection agent? He sees an invoice from June 2008, sent to an address where I moved out of in February ... 2007, and he is now sending this to my new address.
Maybe the collection agent could see this and alert the hospital? So they can send the invoice for me to pay? Would that not be the most logical and customer service oriented thing to do?
I believe so, but given the fact that collection agents make a lot of money doing this, and given the fact that most people have that initial reaction to pay the bill, I fear that the system is set up to allow collection agents to make money off people's backs...
Does anybody have similar stories to share?
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