Too good for the Internet porn, was he?
He was a newbie at the time. I guess he did not realize there’s free stuff out there.
This may be treading in dangerous waters-- also not trying to hijack the thread–, but Mrs. Jinks and I are Christians (not the thump-you-over-the-head-and-scream-at-you sort, but we live our beliefs and tried to raise our younguns to respect them). We were disappointed.
Did you pay the final bill with a check? You could also ask your bank if they have a record of your paying $103.12 at that time, even though the account is closed now.
That would be my suggestion.
Under NO circumstances are you to give these people access to your bank account.
I would also ditto the advice above…make them prove it. A letter stating, “You owe this much, could be more, we don’t know yet” doesn’t count.
Yes, I am trying to find as much information as possible before I actually do anything, because it is much easier to do that than to try to undo something later.
A friend shot me a link for a website about statutes of limitations and such, so I am looking over that, now, as well as reading some of the stuff people kindly linked me to.
A call to Verizon will probably be in order tomorrow to see what I can find out, there.
Already answered in the OP:
If Verizon sold your account, chances are they might not have your records anymore.
I noticed something in another post that seemed inaccurate. The age of the debt itself does not matter - collection efforts do. If no attempts to collect the debt have been made within the statute of limitations, then the ability to collect the debt expires. So, if the statute in your state says 5 years, then this is about the time you should experience a collection effort on a 2003 debt in order to keep the claim alive. As it is only for $100, they probably won’t go to the expense of obtaining a judgment against you if you don’t pay them. It will simply go back in the files until the right to collect is about to expire again in 2013.
This is spectacularly incorrect. The only thing that might reset the statute of limitations, depending on your state, is for you to acknowledge that the debt is valid (for example by renegotiating it). The statute of limitations is a doctrine in both civil and criminal law that you must bring certain claims within a specified time period if you are going to bring them at all. It does not have a rolling renewal period.
I had the same problem with a old Verizon bill and the same a#*holes started harassing me by mail. Gfactor had me contact the Attorny Generals office in my state and state my dispute with them. The AG then contacted the collection agengy and the stopped calling me and sent a letter to me stating that the debt was closed.
So contact the AG's office online and fille a consumer complaint. I accused them of fraud because the provided me with no record from Verizon showing that I owed Verizon money. They have to do that.This seems to me like a good idea, and I wish I had known about it a couple of years ago. My wife was pursued by an agency attempting to collect a debt for some magazine subscriptions. We asked them to provide a copy of her purchase/subscription order. They said that she had subscribed by telephone, so a recording of the conversation was legally equivalent (I don’t know if this is true or not - I imagine so, and it sounded plausible at the time) and agreed to retrieve the tape.
They did, and called to play back the tape. My wife wasn’t at home, so they played the tape to her mother. I spoke to them later after my wife lost her temper on the phone with them, and suggested that it may not be legal to inform a third party about a debt, since my wife was by no means a minor at the time. I didn’t know about the FDCPA - I was basically bluffing.
The woman issued a threat to take unspecified “further action” and hung up on me. My wife called straight back, spoke to a different agent, and received an apology. Never heard from them again.
Knowledgeable people, did I handle that right? It seemed to work, but was it a risky strategy for any reason? She genuinely did not owe the money.