I’m not in any debt of any kind or behind on any bills. My Transunion and Equifax scores are 828 and 832 respectively as of this morning.
Last week, Friday, June 10th, I received a $100 bill for a doctor appointment I had in late May. I mailed off the full payment on Wednesday, June 15.
Yesterday I received a call from the hospital billing office. They wanted to confirm my address and date of birth (which they had) because they wanted to confirm I received a bill they sent me. I confirmed I received the bill. They then started getting demanding and wanted to know when they would receive payment or should it be sent to collections?
Would I like to make payment over the phone right then with a credit card.
I got incredulous. Told them that I mailed the payment but I had received the bill less than a week ago. Why would you be pestering me about a bill that is less than a week old. “Just because you received the bill less that a week ago doesn’t mean it wasn’t due before then. Your appointment was May 23rd.” I can’t pay a bill before I receive it. I have no copays just deductibles. And I don’t pay them until I get the bill. This is nuts.
That they had all my information including the account number tells me at least it was someone on the inside. The person spoke mid-western English. I hung up and called the billing office number. They could not confirm or deny that someone had called me.
I don’t know if it was a scam, although it sounds fishy that they would call you and expect payment over the phone. Never give out your credit card info to an unsolicited phone caller. The fact that they were brow-beating you about it makes me suspicious.
I would never give out cc info on an unsolicited call.
That they had all the correct information could make it sound legit.
However, some years ago I was involved in an investigation where a woman working in a company comptroller office was scamming the company by having her boyfriend send phony bills from a fake company that she would send payment to. The company was so large and the phony bills while multiple were in small amounts, that nobody noticed for years what was going on. The couple took them for 200K.
Just because someone works in the billing office of a legit company doesn’t mean that individual isn’t a scammer.
Probably SOP for them to try to collect outstanding bills. Obviously they don’t believe you sent in a payment. I would have hung up if they asked for payment after I said it was sent.
How is 6 days outstanding? I’ve been with this doctor for years.
It was a routine appointment but he takes some of his appointments in a hospital.
After I told them I mailed in payment they once again asked if I was sure and if I wanted to make payment over the phone. That is exactly when I hung up. If it was legit it was a very odd call.
I’ve had similar happen – go to a specialist associated w a hospital, receive no bill for several weeks, then get a demand letter for the overdue bill I never saw threatening collections. I call the office and ask for an explanation and am told that’s just how their billing works and there was no prior mailing. So basically incompetence.
Probably a change in payment processors to a less competent one — in many if not by now most cases it is outsourced and it’s a PITA. Some will take their sweet time crediting the payment (collecting off the float?). One of my providers uses a service that when I try to sign in and pay a bill, asks me for “the reference number on the invoice”… which I don’t have. (To make it even more frustrating they no longer take deductible or copay on-site!)
I’ve gotta’ go with this, but … some people in billing/collections are ridiculously and gratuitously aggressive – you’re a deadbeat until proven otherwise.
Which sucks.
I was once put into collections by a big hospital (chain) that had switched billing software. No bills went out for something like two months. Rather than notice the dramatic increase in late payments and look into it, they just put everybody into collection (turned over to a collection agency) with no notice.
During COVID.
When nobody had anything else to be concerned about.
Soulless. Maybe incompetent, too, but basically soulless.
If you’re bored, call and ask to speak to a Supervisor (bark as far up the food chain as you can). Maybe somebody will care.
You did the right thing hanging up. It could have been an aggressive solicitation of payment, or it could have been a scam.
The fact that they had a lot of correct info doesn’t mean much. Social engineering hacks do this - they use one hack to get one piece of info, then use that to convince others they are legit and to give them another piece of info. Collect enough info, and they can convince people of anything, steal identities, whatever.
I once got a call from work saying, “Hi, Sam. I am X from the Denver office. I was recently at your office talking to your boss Dave Smith about a project, and lost his number. I’m getting on a plane back home in an hour, and need to clear up something, Can you give me his number?”
It was a scam. But he had my number, knew who my boss was, and there was a ‘Dave Smith’ at the Denver office. Had I given him the number of my manager, he likely would have called him and said something like “Hi, I was just talking to Sam and he gave me your number to ask you…” and used that to either perpetrate the scam or glean even more private information about the company for use in some larger scam or to sell to others who want to do the same.