Collection Agency Spreading the money to Different Accounts

Posted by Gamosi on October 17, 2000 at 16:19:04:

I had a baby 2 years ago (1998) and I had been having
trouble with my secondary insurance paying the remainder
of the hospital bill ($300.00). I was told that secondary
insurance was not for taking care of left over bills
and furthermore my secondary insurance would have paid
less then my primary insurance did anyway. I am now in
collections after sending several documents back and
forth to my insurance company for verification of service.
The collection agency requested that I pay an outstanding
bill of $212.00. I made the payment via electronic
transfer on the account that was $212.00. To my dismay,
I received another letter from the same collection
agency stating that we still owed more ($140.00) more.
We paid thinking that this was the end. A month later we
were contacted by phone and told that we still had yet
another outstanding bill and I inquired as to what
happened to the previous payments. At first, they could
not locate the account numbers, then I was told that
the money from the $212.00 that was paid was actually
spread out amongst the three unpaid accounts and that
the $140.00 was then applied the the three acounts also.
With this being done, we were told that we still old a
remainder balance of $189.00. I was also informed that
this particular collection agency spread the money out
over all deliquent accounts for their purpose only. Just
in case the accounts went into collections with another
agency, it would make collecting on the account easier.
This is what I was told. Furious, I thought the first
monies, sent to pay off an account that was $212.00 was
actually being paid off only to find out that this money
was taken and spread out over other delinquent accounts.
Can they actually do this? Sorry for the long explanation.

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