Fun with Afni

Today I received a COLLECTION NOTICE from Afni, Inc., for a "remaining balance from the original creditor for services associated with the previous telephone number listed below". A quick poke on Google showed that a lot of people are experiencing the same; the theme I've picked out is that Afni bought old debt cheap and is trying to collect on it, partly by snail-mail spamming people unassociated with the original accounts. Another problem is that in many cases, the "debts" appear to be billing mistakes by the "original creditors". Yay. Just what I wanted to spend time on today.

What to do? Well, I went to afnicollections.com, just to see how I might "manage my account online". There they want the Account # on the collection notice and the last four digits of your SSN. Hm. Well, I sure as hell ain't gonna give them anything they haven't already proven they know. No SSN on the collection notice, so online account management is out.

There's a toll-free telephone number for Afni listed on the notice; should I call and try to get this straightened out? Well, no. The overwhelming advice I've read is that you do /not/ want to get on the phone with someone whose primary motivation is to get money from you. Seems obvious, but there is definitely an urge to get on the phone/internet and "settle the problem" quickly.

So, it's the snail-mail route for me. These hits were helpful to me in writing a letter: http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/271/RipOff0271533.htm#254990 http://complaintwire.org/Complaint.aspx/BL6ADlQfXwAGogjJkKUatA My letter went out in the mail today, Certified, Return Receipt Requested. We'll see what turns up!

The best part of all this? Further down on the Google search was the website for the company that "remove[s] negative information from the first pages of Search Engines and replace[s] the bad links with positive information." The internet is a beautiful thing; it's caused even the companies who harass people for a living to need "protection".