In 2006, my husband and I filed chapter 13 bankruptcy. We were living to next to nothing during that period. I had to quit my job as a nurse aide because of a shoulder injury so that impacted our budget pretty hard. We paid all of our bills on time and still had a little money left over. In April 2007, our plan was confirmed and we had no debt except the court payments and regular bills. July 2007 we moved from a rental unit to an apartment which was much closer to my husband’s job. Gas was close to a gallon and the transportation costs were sky high. We always had problems receiving our mail at our old unit. We received other resident’s mail and vice versa.
I was concerned the first few months at living at our current address because we received very little mail. I finally contacted all of my utility companies and car insurance only to find out that all of my mail was being mailed back to them. I managed to clear up the mess, but important bills were now a few months late and we had to make payment arrangements with all the companies involved. We had two catalog companies that I bought my clothes through sometimes and had a small line of credit with them. I paid all of these companies off eventually.
In 2009, we received a letter from a debt collector stating we had an open credit card. I asked them to verify the debt. I never received any letter back from them. They kept on sending out bills though but couldn’t verify the debt. I sent the letters to my bankruptcy attorney and the bills stopped. A few months passed, another collection agency, same debt. Same thing happened as the first. Six months later, another collection agency, same debt, same response. Never heard from any of these collection agencies again. I finally got fed up and put a fraud alert on our credit report. The alert was released in January, guess what a new collection agency contacted my attorney regarding the same old credit card. I talked to someone at our attorney general’s office, the fact that they don’t have our old address is suspicious because we never have taken out any credit cards since filing the chapter 13. This is why I’m suspecting ID theft. I checked my credit report just last Saturday and found another credit card that couldn’t be mine. So this makes 2 suspicious cards that probably aren’t ours because we never applied for any cards. What can you do to stop the possible ID theft credit card from being acquired by other junk or third party debt agencies? Has anyone else dealt with ID theft? We are currently under bankruptcy protection so I believe that no one can sue us. I did find out that the credit card holder wrote off this debt as a bad debt. We have never ever been contacted by the original creditor. Thanks
I just filed a complaint with the FTC about the credit issues. The counselor suggested contacting my local police and filing a police report with almost certain ID theft. You think it can’t happen to you! I had horrible credit and still someone managed to get credit off of my poor credit rating. I probably now will have to take steps to clear up the ID theft. I will never, never ever use credit cards again. Look what they’ve done to our country. Thank you for all of your answers.
