Jess Buss

Review of Mountain Land Collections

Okay, obviously nobody likes a collections agency....

Okay, obviously nobody likes a collections agency. In fact, I'm a bit surprised there's even a rating option on the website. Even for collections agencies, though, there is such a thing as standards and respect.

Here's what happened to me. Out of the blue, I get a collections notice for a bill I didn't even know existed. The billing company didn't talk to the hospital and sent me to collections because they didn't have my address - poor business in my opinion.

I received the collections notice on December 15. In tears, I called the collections agency. The company taking me to collections didn't ring a bell, but with the date of service, I was able to deduce that it was the local hospital. They also told me that I had until January 19 to pay the bill without having anything reported to the credit agencies.

I called the hospital, who sent me to their billing service - Epic Physician Services (or something like that). Epic had no record of me. Went back to the hospital, someone from the hospital called Epic, they found me, and deduced that they were unable to bill me because they didn't have my address (even though this was provided to the hospital on the date of service and had not changed - they blamed some botched data dump between systems). They pulled everything back from collections, billed me directly, and everything was paid and cleared by January 20.

Around February 1, I see that I have one account in collections on my credit report. They indicate that I was brought to collections in August - though I was not notified until December. I called Mountain Land Collections and they indicated that they reported the collections notice on my credit report on December 31 and pulled it back on January 15. I asked for a document from Mountain Land Collections indicating that I was wrongfully brought to collections, but apparently they don't do that sort of thing.

I'm trying to buy a house - this does not help me. I have a completely blemish-free credit report right up until the year I'm going to the bank for the biggest loan of my life, for somebody else's mistake.