12-24-2009, 05:25 PM
Mike Sellers wrote:
[quote=M A V I C]With every bill we get, we call up and setup a payment plan. Whatever the longest one they'll give us is... never more than a year.
We had a $6,000 bill for surgery on one of my kids from last year. We arranged to pay it over 18 months. A few months ago, they called and gave us a pretty decent discount to pay the remainder off. Now I wish we had paid even less over the last year.
Stretch it out as long as you can. As long as you're sending something each month, I can't imagine them going after you if you exceed the 12 month timetable, especially considering how many people totally stiff them.
Yeah, we basically heard that if you keep in contact and don't just ignore them, they'll work with you. We did have one issue where we had a payoff plan and before the end of it we got a letter saying if we didn't pay off the remainder within 7 days we were going to collections. We even had an invoice from them that gave the date the next payment was due (weeks off) and showed we weren't behind. That would have been the final payment... $30 or something like that. So we just went ahead and paid it, but we also sent a copy of the invoice along with a note pointing out their collection warning was contrary to the previous agreement.