Complaint Review: Merchants' Credit Guide - Bennet & Deloney - Asset Acceptance

I wanted to share an interesting (and disturbing) tale on this site.

In 1994, my husband paid off a credit card he had at a furniture store in Albuquerque, NM. His account was a bit delinquent, and the store agreed to accept $1,000 on a balance of $1,141 and to close the account/consider it paid off.

So, fast forward 11 years (11 years during which we never hear anything from the store or a collection agency). In late November, we start receiving phone calls from a company called Bennet & Deloney (typically abusive and demanding). They claimed to be representing Asset Acceptance and were trying to collect on a $141 debt from the same furniture store in Albuquerque; they also claimed Asset Acceptance had been trying for ages to get us to pay (not true--never heard from them; I'm from a family of lawyers--I save everything).

We filed a dispute letter with them and haven't heard back yet. We also consulted our paperwork and called the furniture store to make sure there was no debt owed (and it's never appeared on a credit report).

A week after we sent the dispute letter to Bennet & Deloney, we received one from Merchants' Credit Guide Co. They ALSO claimed to be representing Asset Acceptance and were trying to collect the same $141 debt that was supposedly owed on the furniture store credit card.

Thinking that perhaps (although it seemed unlikely) Bennet & Deloney had already passed the account on to another collection agency, we called to inquire. According to Merchants' Credit, they had no knowledge of Bennet & Deloney and were trying to collect on a debt for Asset Acceptance (claimed they'd purchased our charged off debt, just as Bennet & Deloney claimed). So we sent off another dispute letter and haven't heard anything back.

What blows my mind are a couple of things. First, we have the paperwork that proves we don't owe this money. Okay, so mistakes happen--maybe it was a legitimate one. But to receive the exact same claim letter from two different collection agencies during the same month seems incredibly fishy. It suggests, to me at least, that this is indeed a scam and that chances are neither of these companies purchased any charged off debts (esp. since there is no debt).

So where did they get the information? How is it legal (well, probably isn't) for them to harass us like this? How is it that two different companies would be able to access the same information about my husband within the same month?

Both companies demanded immediate payment; Bennet & Deloney insisted it be a credit card and that we do it over the phone. How many people, including the ones who've complained here about paying these companies over the phone and never receiving confirmation of the payment, were probably scared and frustrated enough to pay up before their credit was damaged? Yikes.

Kristen
Grand Junction, Colorado
U.S.A.