Typical corporate, non-vendor or commercial customer, accounts receivable work.

If you're a consumer, you're dirt to one of these companies. If you stop doing business with them, its nothing off their back. Hence why you often have to go into long, protracted battles to settle disputes with billing departments. I was fighting with an ambulance company about some charges for services not rendered and I refused to pay (as I well should!). Every "customer service" rep I called in the billing department told me I had to make a complaint in writing, to a PO Box, simply addressed to the "Billing Department" and no specific person. Requests to speak to someone in charge were frequently met with "the supervisor is on vacation" or "has left for the day" (I love getting those at 8-9am). Once I finally got a supervisor, she looked at some records and made an immediate adjustment! I then questioned her (since she claimed to be the head of the billing department) about their rather unethical buisness practicies (padding bills with charges for services not delivered) and as to why I was given such a runaround about those charges from their representatives while she made the adjustment in less than 5 minutes! Oh, I still reported them to the state insurance comissioner for insurance fraud, since I'm sure they pad those bills because they know insurance companies just pay a percentage of whatever bill is sent to them.

The chief reason why they latch onto YOUR money if you make a mistake is to make interest on it. Start threatening to take legal action and you'll get your money back in a hurry. Of course if THEY make a mistake or take a long time to post a payment (oh yes, we received that electronically on xx day, but that was after our processing time!!) YOU are the one who gets screwed.

 

I went to mail in a payment to ford and flipped the darn adress backwards so it was sent back to myself. Well, ford was understand even though it was 32 days before everything was straightened out, they tagged my credit past due 30 days, even though I knew I had made the payment. That was a while back, and ever since then I just run to wal-mart and cut a check for the pickup payment (noted on the check) and send a money gram to FMC, and call it in for confirmation. I am a couple payments ahead and went to call it in and the lady told me my next payment was due jan 5. 07 of 20 dollars higher than the normal payment. She said I had a late fee and was only sending in the minimum payment and blah blah blah, but it is such a good account that they were going to wave the fee, I can see the wave a fee online but nobody will tell me what it is for, and why it wasn't taken out of one of the payments that was made ahead of time. One of these days I will get a english speaking person to talk to.

 

oh yes, i am dealing with DFAS (defense financing accounting service), i got out of the Navy last august, then in april i get a nice letter stating that i opwe $4000 to the government for them overpaying me for about 2 years.

so after reviewing the sheets and stuff, i said fine, but.....the stupid address they orginally sent it to was my old one! i hadn't lived there since i got out. and the cool thing is it said if no response in 30 days, then will consider the payment defaulted and blah blah blah.

so i called these idiots and ask them why would they give such a short limit on this stuff when they know alot of people move after they get out of the military, i just got the standard this is my job, i don't know answer.

and worst yet........these idiots count it as a loan! thats right, its on my credit as a money loan, one heck of a loan, one i didn't ask for, and they charge %1 interest on it!

and the idiots charged me money for leave i didn't take, and i even faxed them the official leave papers that were cancelled and the end of tour leave i took when i got out signed by my captain. but NO! they need an official memo from my command stating that i did not take leave during those times.

dealing with dfas makes every other creditor look good.