Daily Dose of Sultnpapper 07/27/18> Courtesy letter … Since when is threatening someone considered a courtesy?
Some of you who have been with me for sometime will remember the story of how my oldest boy took his younger brothers razor sharp ax and in a moment of utter stupidity ended up burying it is leg right above the ankle. That little mistake resulted in a trip to the emergency and several stitches to close the wound.
So that was in June of 2017, fast forward to last week, when my oldest boy gets a “courtesy letter” from a local attorney who says that he has been retained to collect the 170.91 for a certain group who says that he owes them.
Naturally he was a little disturbed when he got this letter in the mail since this “courtesy letter” demanded payment immediately or they would be forced to file a legal action against him and then he would have to pay not only the 170.91 but also all the court fees and attorney’s fees. This is my twenty year old boy’s first lesson in how things work in the real world.
I wasn’t in town the night the accident happened so I don’t know exactly what all and who all played a hand in doctoring him up at the local emergency room. Neither he or his mother recall that any of the people ever referred to the emergency room or any of the doctors or nurses as being affiliated in any way with the name on this courtesy letter that list them as his “creditor” in this matter.
My wife even asked the lady who handle his input into the system that night for a list of who exactly he would be receiving bills from so that she could keep an eye out for them in the mail and make sure they are paid promptly, the lady doing the intake of patients said she could not provide that list. That seemed kind of strange to me, how can you be running a standalone emergency room that is a part of the Methodist Hospital and not know who is working for your company?
My wife handles all the mail and she stayed on top of the situation making sure that as the bills that came in that weren’t covered by the insurance that those got paid and so this letter is a total surprise. There are some things about this letter that are troubling also just from an appearance standpoint.
If you noticed I didn’t use a “$” with the amount, 170.91 , the reason is that neither did the attorney in his letter. So just what does the 170.91 represent? Since the attorney wasn’t specific I told my boy he should get a bag of peanuts and count out 175 of them and send them to the attorney as payment in full, and the extra four nuts are his tip. You would think a professional who deals in legal matters and the law would pay attention to details.
The attorney says that he is on retainer and operating on behalf of this company he listed, he made quite a few demands in this “courtesy notice” as he called it. With the magic of Microsoft word that word “courtesy” would easily be changed to “demand” if my son doesn’t respond within the 30 days as he demands. He would then file suit at the local court house figuring that my son is a dead beat and wouldn’t pay attention to the notice to appear in court.
The attorney would show as part of his “evidence” a copy of the now “demand notice letter” in order to get what is known as a default judgment. This kind of thing happens all the time in court cases.
So how would you react if you received a letter like this in the mail? Have you ever received a letter like this?
One thing we have learned over the years by having four kids is that emergency rooms visits are a real nightmare and that you will get bills from doctors, physicians groups, radiology groups, specialists and a whole slew of other folks that you will have no idea who they are or what they did for you or your kid. As best as I can tell, most hospitals don’t seem to employ any medical professionals any longer; at least not in emergency rooms. I have been told by people in the industry that the hospitals don’t want the liability of the doctors and nurses. So essentially the hospitals are just leasing space to the doctors and the patients are just walk in customers with no appointment needed.
If you ever do get one of these letters and honestly don’t know if it is legitimate or not don’t panic and just send check or go online and pay it with the convenient credit card option either to make it go away. You have the right to dispute it and also make them prove it is legitimate. Their verification the attorney will send you, if you dispute it, will be a one page “statement” that will have a couple entries on it at most and a statement balance saying you owe the money. Is that really verification though? Not in my book, I want some real verification.
I prepared a letter in response for my son to send to this attorney, listing ten items that are needed in order for my son to actually determine if this is a legitimate claim that is being made for him to pay. Most of the items should be fairly easy to produce, if this attorney really is representing a legitimate client with a legitimate claim. There are a couple that require notarized statements by the people who treated him but hey, if they can make demands; so can my son.
Who’s to say there isn’t some staffer in a medical billing office that isn’t pilfering names, addresses and account information and has cut a deal with a shady attorney to send out letters that are fraudulent? The company that he is supposed to send his payment to isn’t the company that he supposedly owes. That might be a red flag, but it also might very well be the case if it is legitimate, so why not make them prove who they are and what role they play in this scenario?
Demanding letters of authorization and copies of signed contracts seems like a reasonable request, I would hate to see us pay and then be hit with a bill from the real people he might still owe if any exist.
My son is also on record, in the response letter, that upon receipt of the 10 items he will review them and make a determination if it is legitimate and if so he will pay it promptly, he’s not refusing to pay; just he needs to know if in fact he really owes this outfit. It is hard to pay a debt if you don’t know one exists, and when the first correspondence you get regarding a debt comes from an attorney that should raise some doubt in your mind as to what the hell is going on.
Scams are being run everyday around this world and so before you just pay something because someone says you owe it you should really check it out, especially when it comes out of the blue so to speak. You would think that he would have received a bill in the mail at 30, 60 and 90 days at least if this is legitimate bill he owes.
I also wonder if these doctors and physicians groups even bother to send out bills. Is the money they get from the medical insurance provider enough and they just sit on the other and after a year sell the “delinquent” accounts off to these shady lawyers who then pursuit you in court ?
There are plenty of attorneys who make quite a bit of money buying old credit card debt and then “collect” on those accounts using the courts while pretending to represent the credit card company or the bank that issued the credit card. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if these lawyers haven’t expanded their practices into the medical field now and are buying up old medical debt and going about their business that way.
One thing I have done for a long time is study law. I read a lot of court cases and I read a lot of law suits. Words have different meanings in law than they do in normal everyday life and conversation. One word and phrase in particular that comes to mind and is used in plenty of debt collection law suit filings is the word “behalf” and the term , ‘on behalf of”.
In normal conversation if I tell you that I am here on behalf of Joe to pick up his saw he loaned you; you would take that to mean Joe sent me over to get his saw from you and that I would be taking it back to Joe. Isn’t that what you would think, I mean why else would I be there if Joe hadn’t sent me? I wouldn’t have any idea that Joe loaned you his saw, so you believe me right?
Well, in law the phrase “ on behalf of” means “in place of” so the phrase “on behalf of really means that they are taking the place of Joe and they’re not acting as Joe’s representative in getting Joe’s saw back from you, they are there getting it for themselves. Just like if they were there in court for XYZ Bank, they would state,” I am representing my client, XYZ Bank in this matter.” but if they have bought the debt for pennies on the dollar, which is what debt sells for, they will always say, “I am here on behalf of XYZ Bank in this matter.” To the untrained person both things mean the same but there is a world of difference between those statements when it comes to being in court.
Seeing how this letter he received used the phrase “on behalf of” I think this lawyer has bought an account or has a scam running with the help of someone who has access to medical records. I would like to see the look on his face when he reads that my son is requiring him to produce a letter of authority and a sign contract that details the specifics of his role in working “on behalf “ of the alleged creditor and his compensation agreement for his work. Those two things should prove whether or not he is working for the “creditor” or working for himself and trying to mislead my son.
The attorney also only has thirty days from the time he receives the letter to reply, what is good for the goose is also good for the gander, as they say. My son’s letter is being sent via registered mail with return receipt so he can see exactly what day the attorney received his reply, then clock starts ticking the days down.
It also clearly stated in his response that all items requested must be provided otherwise it will be considered as a “non responsive” reply. The only exception is that my son did allow for the attorney to request more time to produce the documents, no need in being a prick about it, if the attorney needs more time my son will grant him an extension of time. But that request needs to be within the 30 day window.
If the attorney doesn’t produce the documents in the time frame and continues to try and collect from my son he told him that would be considered an act of harassment, he didn’t elaborate on what he might do, and we’ll just let the lawyer think about that one on his own.
In life you can’t just let people push you around because they have a piece of paper that makes them think they are better or smarter than you. There are plenty of lessons to learn in life, this is just one of many that my son has coming.
Please do not consider anything you have read here in this Daily Dose as legal advice, it is not, it is just a lesson I am teaching my son and sharing with you. The lesson is don’t fear threats made at you, make those people who say you owe something prove it.
Until next time,
@sultnpapper
There are so many questions about this one. Is he, in fact, a lawyer would be my first question. I agree that you need to put the onus on him to prove that the money is owed. Here many bad lawyers buy up lists and try to collect funds under the guise of being legitimately owed. Why is this coming up now, more than a year after the fact? If someone owed me money, I would be asking for the money long before a year is up. And if it is a legitimate company why haven't they sent an invoice? Little red flags and alarm bells are going off on this one.
Yes, this seems a little "fishy" or "phishy" perhaps, it will be up to the lawyer now to produce the documentation to our satisfaction. My wife opens every piece of mail and my son doesn't get much mail to begin with, so when something came for him after his injury she made sure he opened it and read it, we would have known if this had been presented to him to pay previously.
It would seem reasonable to think, if this were a legitimate request for payment, they'd have sent several bills (about 30 days apart) before turning it over to a lawyer. As you say, this feels awfully fishy.
Well if they are fishing they may not like the fish they caught this time,
Made me laugh through I doubt they would see it as you do. It's strange there's no $ sign as you say and the amount is an odd number.
It makes me wonder if it's made up, you do right to challenge it.
Well if they wanted him to pay in dollars and cents it would have made sense to put the $ sign in there to distinguish that. It wasn't just a one off mistake either , as the amount was shown and mentioned in three separate places in the entire letter, none of which were proceeded with the $ sign.
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I use to work in the insurance department for the local hospital. (Not my favorite job.) How things worked there was, once we got payment from the insurance companies, we sent out bills to the patients. After so long (can’t remember the exact time line), if we didn’t get any payments from the patient, we sent out what we called 90, 60, 30 day letters. First letter went out reminding them they had 90 days to make a payment or it would go to collections. Then 60 days, the 30 days. The bills, reminder letters, and collection letters were all computer compiled and generated. The accounts receivable printed the list and stuffed them in envelopes. This system was awful.
I personally had not gotten a bill, then out of nowhere I got the 30 day reminder. No bill, no 90 day, no 60 day. I went straight to the billing office and asked what was going on. They said they were getting a lot of complaints from others either. Talk about inefficient!
Yes, it makes you wonder just what the hell is going on, is the post office throwing mail away and not delivering or are they just not sending the stuff. In this particular instance the alleged "creditor" is a group that the name starts with , "PA " which I take to mean some physicians assistants group.
I will end up exploring this further later on but right now since he was given thirty days to respond to the attorney's demands that is what we had to do first.
It also makes me wonder just how much insurance fraud can actually be taking place in the current system we use. My sister used to work for Blue Cross in their claims processing center for years and years and she said that as long as they received a bill from a doctor or hospital that had the correct name of the insured, policy number that matched the name of the insured, and a properly coded procedure their company would never question the claim and would pay the portion the policy was to cover based on the policy conditions of in network or out of network based on the status of the care provider. They never contact the insured person to ask if the service or procedure was even rendered the insured person. According to her the insurance companies, or at least the one she worked for, didn't have the manpower or time to check into every claim submitted by service providers to see if the claim was a legitimate claim.
With the amount of the number of these stand alone "emergency rooms" that have been popping up all around the area it makes me wonder if these hospitals or physicians haven't figured that out and are pouring tons of fraudulent claims in to these insurance companies for payment. The system looks pretty ripe for the picking if other insurance companies operate in similar fashion as Blue Cross has shown to operate.
Now with the government requirement of a person's medical records being required to be kept online, just who all has access to that data? I would have to think that doctors offices would since they would be making entries into the patient data base to keep it up to date. Emergency rooms and hospitals too would probably have access as well. Can the data be pulled on a group of "patients using their zip code?
If that were the case it could be wide open for scamming, a data entry person could just run a report for any zip code they wanted , with a date range of a year old or so and then sell the list to someone who could take it and start creating some bogus charges and have an attorney go collect for them, or an attorney could be doing it themselves. All they would need was another business name and a P.O. Box for the checks to be mailed to or a credit card processing company to process credit card payments.
This might very well be a legitimate bill he owes and the amount really isn't that much in the grand scheme of what we did have to pay out of pocket for that emergency room visit. The questions that need answered have now been sent to the attorney so we will just see what he comes back with in the form of a response. The amount being less than a couple hundred bucks would make it where most people probably wouldn't even question it and just pay it to make it go away.
I try and stand on doing what is right, not what is easy. So we will play the game and put the ball back in their court and let them earn their money if they are entitled to it by proving their claim.
If anything, this is a good teaching opportunity to show him how a person needs to respond when threatened.
Thanks for sharing your story and a glimpse of how that hospital did things.
Sounds to me that scammers all over the world go to the same learning school, really makes me so angry especially when they hone in on the vulnerable!
Medical services here have given me near heart attacks when we've received courtesy letters for large amounts outstanding for lengthy periods. Why no statements beforehand? Often these bills were not settled by medical aid because of incorrect codes used. Had I not queried these and simply paid, it would have cost us dearly many times already!
But what you're describing in the emergency room sounds like the perfect opportunity for scammers who must get information from someone in those facilities! Not nice at all!!!
I am not saying they are scamming us but they are going to have to prove it, because the wife stayed on top of the bills as they came in and we took care of everyone we knew about, this maybe something that slipped through the cracks on their part, but if it had this surely isn't the right way to handle it.
This is the most bizarre thing I have read today. God, I hate the health care system in this country.
Yea, I do post some bizarre shit sometimes, but every word of it is true.
As I live in the UK, things might be a bit different here, but a few years ago several councils were pulled up for sending out letters from fake "debt collection agencies" to late payers. When I get one of these letters - sometimes for bills I don't even owe - I do an online search to look into the "company" making the demand.
For an unexpected bill like this, I always ask for an itemised invoice. Sometimes this reveals a "mistake" and a much reduced payment.
When you say "councils" would that be lawyers or attorneys as we call them here normally? We also use council but more as a descriptive term for their work.
It will be interesting to see what response he gets from this attorney, and it might be a legitimate bill but the attorney is now going to have to work for his money if it is in fact legitimate.
Thanks for reading and sharing your experience with us.
Ah - I meant local government. Our local governments are called councils.
Where is Scotland Yard when you need them? They should be all over crooked city and town councils for trying to scam the subjects of the Queen.
We do have town and city councils here now that I think about it, but it is been so long so since I actually lived in an incorporated city I forgot about those "councils". I am not surprised though that some local govs are just a tad on the shady side of the law, and that makes you wonder if the police departments are on the up and up in those towns as well. Who is to say that they aren't pulling some shady doings of their own.
Ooh... don't get me started! I've just recorded a rant about council parking charges, but unfortunately it's taking ages to "render" so it won't be completed till tomorrow.
Then there's nepotism, shady golf trips and holidays - luckily some of our local press are still on the ball (sometimes). Some councils are like fiefdoms, with one party in power for decades. Add sectarianism to the mix and you have a hotbed of corruption. People know about it and talk about it but nothing much is done.
Sounds like you already started , I can't wait to hear it when it is fully cooked.