Wakefield & Associates Rude, uncompromising Aurora Colorado

We've had an account with Wakefield for over a year now based on a couple of emergency room visits I had in 2012.  We didn't know about the account until we were served with judgement papers in August 2013.  We immediately contacted the company and set up payments based on what we could afford.

When I set up the payments, they weren't happy with what we could afford, but said we could revisit the amount in January 2014, and they would contact me at that point.

Now, the day after we were served papers, my husband cut his head, requiring stiches.  Because we live in a small town, my husband went to a clinic where his bosses wife is a nurse.  She told us to just bill our insurance, and when we got the bill for the deductible to give it to her husband and they would pay it because they knew we were struggling.  (They didn't know about the collections or judgment, just that we were struggling.)  So this is what we did.

Things being what they are, we gave my husband's boss the bill when we got it, but he didn't get around to paying it until the 15th of this month.  By the time the clinic's billing office (they're a Banner facility), got the check, they'd already turned the account over to Wakefield, so they sent the payment to them.

We got a notice from Wakefield on Tuesday, and my husband talked to his boss yesterday, which is why we know he cut the check on the 15th of this month.  My husband contacted both Banner and Wakefield with this information, but both said they had no record of the check.

Today, my husband got a call from Belinda at Wakefield to let him know that they had gotten the check, but they were "probably going to send it back" because his boss had included a letter stating this check was to pay off my husband's account.  (Remember, he didn't know we had another collection account with my medical bills and the judgment that is also under my husband's name per Colorado State law, or that this account had been turned to collections, for that matter.)

Anyway, Belinda said that they would not accept this payment as a payoff for the $1600 we owed.  When my husband tried to explain that this check was only for one particular date of service on this new account, she refused to listen, and even went so far as to say she wasn't even speaking about the other account since that one was with the legal department because of the judgement.

If she wasn't talking about that account, why was it an issue?  The balance on this particular visit is just over $600 with interest (why we've got interest on an account we just received notice of is a little iffy to me, but whatever at this point).  Why wouldn't you accept payment of $580 as a payoff of that account?

My husband tried to reason all this out with Belinda, but she shut him down, finally saying she was done with this and she didn't have time to deal with it anymore.  What the heck?  You don't have time to work with someone who is trying to pay a bill they acknowledge is owed?  We've been making the agreed upon payments on my account with no issues for 5 months now.  They never contacted me about possibly increasing our payment this month like they said they would.  Doesn't really matter to me because we're planning on paying it off with taxes. 

Based on this and some of the other reports I've read here, I'm not looking forward to when we do get it paid off.  I'm concerned they're still going to give us problems then!