Complaint Review: I. C. System Inc. - St. Paul Minnesota

This Is Shelly responding to the former employee's rebuttal. There was a big contradiction in what they wrote. Yes, by law they have 5 days to send out a letter explaining they had recieved an unpaid bill from their client. This is the law. I spoke to 2 attorneys and also found the regulations on the internet on a consumer protection site. I knew the notification was not sent because the one girl at IC who was helpful, admitted they did not notify me of the second bill (which had actually been paid unbeknownst to IC for some reason). When I heard that they were aware of their mistake, I knew they had to legally and ethically remove the collections from my credit and give me 30 days to pay it before reporting it to credit bureaus.

That was when the supervisor refused to speak to me the first time. I wish I had the time and energyy to sue those nasty, mean, judgemental, unethical people! BTW, both of those bills were sent to collections were within 90 days of the day of treatment from the doctor, with no notification from the doctor's office or billing they were going to send it to collections. I have never heard of that and so this is partly due to the inept billing company for not seeing I had already paid the second bill and taking steps to avoid the whole collections process. They also had my phone number incorrect which is why it was so important to recieve the notice in writing! Will never use a doctor who uses that billing company again!

I can completely understand you feeling irritated, and since I haven't worked there in quite some time obviously I can't comment on what happened in your phone calls however you do have a few things wrong. 

They are not required to send you a letter within 5 days of receiving placement, however if they have not already sent you something they are require to send you a letter within 5 days of first communication.  You say they didn't send you a letter on the second account, but are you positive that it didn't get lost in the mail or maybe lost in the shuffle with all of your other medical bills you stated you have?  They are not a small company at all, and these things are handled automatically by their system so when an account is placed the initial demand letter goes out automatically, it's not something handled manually by an individual.

As far as your credit report goes, they give you 30 days after placement to make your payment before reporting this to your credit reports.  This is to give you an opportunity to dispute the bill in writing as required by law.  If you had already paid this then your best action would have been to send them a written dispute.

You may be a very honest person, however at the end of the day their ethical obligation belongs to their client.  So unless you send them a dispute and in the validation process you are shown to be accurate, they are required to handle things based on the information provided to them by their client 

At least in your case things ended up getting sorted out and your credit hasn't been affected in the end.  Hopefully you don't have to deal with collection agencies in the future.

Wanted to update. I am blown away by the rudeness of their staff. I could tell from the initial tone of the 1st agent today this was not going to be good. I explained I needed help resolving this and supervisors were not calling me back. She denied this, treated me like crap, then hung up the phone on me when I asked to speak to a supervisor. I called back and another girl said a sup would call me back. Nope! In my case I had paid my bill and the billing company did not update their collections agency (IC), but even if I had not paid the bill, they were still in violation of the law because I had not been notified of their involvement before reporting me to the credit bureau. I explained this repeatedly and got verbally accosted by staff, who asked "why hadn't I just paid my bills", and denied access to a supervisor. Finally, they had recieved info from the billing company to close the account and repair my credit. They did not bother to call me about this, knowing I had called like 6 times in the past 2 days just to get information I would need to make my reports to FTC and credit bureaus. So tonight they would not answer my repeated calls using a phone number with my name on it. I used my hubs phone and they magically answered within 1 minute. I guess they were feeling harrassed by me. Oh, the irony! So finally a supervisor actually spoke to me!!! This was only because they closed my account and were repairing the problem. They would not listen to me when i had a concern, only their customer (the billing company). They were in blatant violation of the law,knew it, and had not a care about it!!!! The supervisor defended her rude staff, citing they hear stories all day! OK, so just assume everyone is a liar and treat them terribly?! That is OK? These people need to be sued repeatedly. I will not use my doctor now because his billing made a terible mistake and uses this agency! Karma.