My acocunt has been sent to collections because I didn't pay my hosting bill and ignored email notice.What do I do? Should I consider hiring a lawyer? Need help...This is kinda scary. How much will I have to pay? And how long does the collections process take? Is a SWAT car gonna arive at my house in a few days or a huge manilla envelope?
I had a similar problem with paypal when they closed my account years ago. You probably will have to pay so start saving, unless you want a long, drawn out legal process which could cost you alot more. You wont need to hire a lawyer but you will need to pay. You'll receive a letter within a few weeks outlining all the details and if you choose not to pay, then you might start getting knocks on the door. It could just be a scare tactic, but companies rarely send out such correspondence unless they are serious.
It will get added to your credit report. If that bothers you, you should think of paying as soon as you can. You can also talk to them: few do that, but creditors are frequently willing to take payments. I have a hard time imagining a hosting bill that would not be smaller than a lawyers bill for even minimal services. If you can't/won't pay the notices don't really mean anything until it is certified mail with a judges signature telling you there is a court date As discussed here in another thread, even judgments can be very hard to collect. Unpaid bills are part of civil, not criminal, law so there is no chance the SWAT team will be interested.
I beg to differ. Companies send out that kind of garbage all the time. They have law firms that send out letters; by themselves they don't mean anything either. It's all a matter of cost. It costs money to send letters, Lawyers get $75 each and more for a standard collections letter. It costs a few hundred dollars to file for a judgment. Even with a judgment it's hard to collect. If you care about your credit rating you need to deal with the problem sooner. If you don't care and have no assets you are pretty much judgment proof.
Just pay the bill. It's never a good idea to ignore a bill, and it's an even worse idea to think they'll never get the money out of you. Maybe the hosting company won't, but once it leaves their hands, company after company will have the rights to your debt and they will hound you for years to come. In some instances, you might find that even after you eventually pay the debt, it will still keep getting sold and you'll never be able to stop the phone calls. Save yourself and everyone else a lot of energy and call the hosting company up to either pay the debt or work out a payment plan.
Just pay the bill, it is cheaper that way. All they way to do is to recover what you owe them. If you go to court, you will most likely lose and end up having to pay legal fees, what you owe them, a fine and additional penalties.
You didn't pay your hosting bill and ignored e-mail notices, eh? Sounds like a personal problem to me. I guess you should have thought about that beforehand.
I paid it today but word 'collections' 'legal' is scary. I wish I hadn't put it off. Afte reading the find print of the notive in more detail the maximum I would have to pay isn't much (I wont give detials because dont want to expose the company).
Glad to hear that you paid the bill. It isn't healthy to avoid the bills, they just keep adding up, then everything just goes downhill. Anyway, kind of funny to hear that a hosting company would go to such an extent to collect a bill.
He's right, as a debt collector you can't say you're going to sue unless you really intend to do so for example