Never before have I heard of this before...
Dear Sir/Madam:
On numerous occasions you have been notified that the outstanding balance on your account is your responsibility and it is seriously past due, however, as of this date your payment has not been received. In an effort to settle this account we would like to offer you a 20% discount making your payment amount $91.20. Please help us clear up this matter by responding immediately.
Sincerely yours,
Billing office
No joke! Seriously, they took 20% off my bill which is a difference of about $23. Simply because I didn't pay it on time. I have to admit, I would have paid the bill now whether they took the 20% off or not (it is one I've known was due but I've been putting off going through the stack and figuring out which are 'real' and which need to be contested with insurance). But the fact that they took 20% off my total bill simply because I hadn't paid it kind of makes me rethink my previous policy of paying things on time... I'm not sure their tactic worked?
Meredith , becareful. I had a billing department tell me that too and i asked someone else about it who use to work for a collections agency and she said that it CAN look bad on your credit report, its considered a settlement payoff or something like that.
ReplyDeleteI was going to say the same thing. Late payments can go on your credit report.
ReplyDeleteYep...used to work in the financial world. It is called "settled for less than due" and they WILL, usually, report it as such. I don't know what kind of bill it is, but if it is a larger company, then they probably report regularly to the credit bureaus, and that's what yours would show as. It is no where near as bad as an unpaid debt, but it IS somewhat of a mark against your credit score.
ReplyDeleteNancy