You get an alert in your email from Credit Karma or you visit www.annualcreditreport.com to obtain your credit report and are surprised to find out a medical bill has been reported to the credit bureaus by a debt collector. You are surprised because you do not owe this medical bill and have no idea why it's now being reported to the credit bureaus. You figure this medical bill issue is a simple fix given you paid it or your health insurance provider took care of it. So, you decide to contact the credit bureaus and the debt collector to communicate to them this error. You fully expect the medical bill to be removed from your credit report without further involvement by you given the simplicity of it all. You even contact the healthcare provider where the services were rendered and your healthcare insurance provider to verify you do not owe this medical bill.
But what you experience after your initial communications disputing the medical bill credit reporting is that the error is verified as ACCURATE and not removed. You are upset by this. How can something you do not owe be reported as owed and no one properly removes the medical bill? Your credit score drops, you were denied credit, or you were otherwise adversely affected by the reporting, including feeling angry and frustrated. You do not know where to turn now. It was supposed to be a simple fix by removing the medical bill from your credit report!
Can anything be done to help remove the medical bill from your credit report?
If you have experienced this situation, we can assure you that your experience is not an isolated experience. Whether the debt collector or the credit bureaus are to blame is something that would need investigated but what we can tell you for sure is that your rights may have been violated under the Fair Credit Reporting Act or the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (sometimes BOTH) entitling you to corrective action and compensation for your unjustly damaged credit.
Not sure what to do next? Give our office a call for a free phone consultation to determine if your rights were violated and how we can help you.
