When you pay a debt collection agency how do you know who you are actually paying?

An interesting question. It could be that a hospital or department store has got tired of chasing you for money and they have given up on you. THis is called a Charge Off. But there is nothing to stop a debt collection agency from buying up all that bad debt for a nickel on the dollar. After all, Sears already figures you for dead, so it might as well get 5 cents as no cents, right? In that case, the original owner of the debt (let's call them Shears) has already notified Equifax and Transnational, so you don't stand to gain absolutely anything from paying a debt collection agancy anything. They cannot or will not repair your credit. Now, on the other hand it might not have gone that far as a chargeoff. One of our local hospitals tries maybe twice to get a payment from you, then they go to a local agency and make a deal like, these people owe us 100 bucks; if you can collect it, you can keep 25 percent. In a case like that, the hospital or whoever, probably would not go to the trouble of notifying all the Equifaxes of the world. So the first thing you need to do is find out if the original debt has been charged off or not. If not, I think it would be worth your while to try and come up with a paymen t scheme. If they say it has been charged off, ask them for a copy of the letter saying so, then do not pay anything, because paying a bad debt like that will do NOTHING to repair your credit, no matter what the creep on the phone says. CHange your number, get caller ID, and don't put your new number in the phone book. Phil