I received a collection notice for $279.55 for a Verizon bill from 12 years ago. I replied to the notice and was asked for personal information such as drivers license or passport. This bill was for a phone number I had never had, but the notice was sent my current address.
Please don't send any personal information to this company. This is a SCAM!
I just got a letter from AFNI stating I owed Sprint money from 1993. I was not even in the states at that time. I had my lawyer call sprint to get information and they said they did not have any account with that name on it. I think this company is a scam. I just called to speak with a manager and they stated that it can not go on a credit report since it was from 1993..why cant something be done to stop this company from falsely contacting people.
I too received a notice for a Verizon bill $820.00 from this company. The phone number they listed was never my phnoe number. I am glad I went to the internet because there are several complaints about this collection agency or so called collection agency. I am going to write a dispute letter but I'm not sure it will help.
I'm so glad I googled this company. My husband received a collection letter stating that he had an unpaid balance of $99.69 from ALLTEL. I pay the bills and I pay all of our bills on time. We switched cellular providers 7 years ago. We were with ALLTEL for 4 years and never had a late payment. When the anniversary date was approaching we notified ALLTEL that we no longer needed their service, paid the bill and closed the account. Now 7 years later we receive a collection letter! This is the first correspondence about this, ALLTEL never contacted me about an unpaid debt. I have not moved or changed my home phone number. I sent AFNI a letter disputing the charge and they send me back a letter stating that this letter is verification of the debt. In yesterdays mail there was a solicitation from ALLTEL stating that my husband was 100% pre-approved for great service and a great deal from ALLTEL Wireless. If we left this company owing them money, would they really send an offer like that? I doubt it. The collector I spoke with on the phone also told me that ALLTEL does not have access to information for this account. AFNI expects me to show verification on a 7 year old debt that does not exist, that's outrageous. She also offered to drop the debt to $60.00 if I would pay it now. I told her no. She said she could see that I paid my bills on time and did not have anything else in collections. She also said that she was prepared to turn this into the credit bureau and it will hurt my credit. These rip-off artist need to be stopped!
Received a letter today from afni, inc of bloomington, if they say that i owe charter communications $279.19. I have never even done business with charter, so i don't know how they got this from! I would like to know how/where/when they got my name from. The census bureau?
I wouldn't be surprised if the republicans report people who didn't support them in the presidential election. They were after all, wrong about the wmds. Made them up, too.
In January 2007 I received a letter from AFNI trying to collect $77.54 for Verizon New England, Inc. The DID have my phone number correct, which was unnerving. I called the number on the letter and spoke with 'Daphne'. She said the amount was from December of 1989! I told her this was ludicrous as it was 18 years old. I asked that they mail me a copy of the bill in question and she said they would do so. To date have not received that but did receive another letter last week stating that they were resuming collection activities.
Am glad I found this site and now know it's another scam!
Uhhhh, Doug. That was the DUMBEST comment I've read on this site YET. Paranoid much? Try to stick with the subject.
I have three debts: my home mortgage, a personal line of credit with my financial institution, and a payment to my health insurance provider. All three of these accounts are current. Although I do very carefully pay some utility bills online, I do not make any on-line purchases nor make mail-order purchases. I just plain don't do it; I make all of my very limited purchases in person. I just received an 'urgent' message from 'Jennifer' at AFNI to return a call to her 'urgent' message. I would return the call, but I am busy and don't want to waste the time to be exasperated by an agent of this company which enjoys a much less than favorable reputation for harassing people. If this is a marketing call, my number is registered on the 'Do-Not-Call Registry'. If it's a collection call, it's a hoax or a scam. I am weary of marketing and other telephone hoaxes. Since no phone number showed on the caller ID, should I simply block all unidentified calls through my telephone service provider?
For more than 4 years I do not have a cingular phone and now on my credit record appears an amount of 84 dollars collection from afni saying I did not pay on 2007 to cingular. This is a big fat lie. Somebody needs to do something about this collection company.
I was briefly employed by Afni right out of college while looking for other work. I will agree with people's claims that many of the debts they attempt to collect are bad and/or just wrong. As debt collectors, we received a portion of the amounts we collected on and the pushiest, rudest people made pretty good pay there because of that. If you could call someone and toss aside all your moralities, you could threaten them with destroying their credit report and scream at them on the phone. The trick was to not actually listen to their pleas - if that person paid up - YOU COLLECTED PART OF IT.
Keep in mind debt collectors aren't calling you to come to a conclusion or resolution on a debt. The only option is to pay or not to pay. I remember many times collecting on accounts way past the SOL and others where the person involved obviously wasn't the debtor. Old ladies who never even lived in states where the bills occurred. The older and less educated the debtor, the easier the target they were. All it took was confidence, a condescending tone, and threats before they caved. It's a lot like being a police officer during an interrogation. You can lie and threaten to your hearts content to get that person to break.
I left that position after less than a year and really wasn't a very good collector. It's a pretty horrible business and I'd suggest learning your rights under Fair Debt Collections and dealing with them accordingly.
I, too, recieved a collection notice from Afni trying to extort money from an old 1995 Verizon New York phone. It's laughable at best because I've never lived in New York, let alone had a phone there! Upon calling a friend with the news, I learned he also received a similar notice from Afni. It was concerning a phone he did have, but it was from 10 years ago and unfortunately he paid them money because he "just didn't want to deal with it". AAAGH! I wish I would have contacted him sooner, knowing this terrible company has received any money at all upsets me to no end. It's important to everyone involved to make sure you send a certified letter disputing the debt and to contact the Attorney Generals office in both your state and the state of Illinois (Afni's address). Good luck, all!
Just got one myself under my husbands name for T-Mobile and that cell phone bill is in my name not his and we had just receved a bill from T-Mobile a few weeks ago.It said we owed less then a 100 dollers and the afni bill was nearly a $1, 000.Both of these fact sent up a red flag for me.