Charter Communications Said Our Bill Was Paid, Failed to Send Boxes for Equipment Return and Then Sent Us to Collections w/o Warning Newport, Oregon

My wife and I moved away from Newport at the end of June of this year (2008) and had the cable disconnected sometime over the course of the next few weeks. When this occured, we understood our final bill was paid and we were told they would send boxes to our new address (suburban Portland) to send our two cable boxes back in. After a few weeks and no arrival of boxes, we called to check on the status. We were told that the internal process for sending the boxes was not done right, but that the new person had handled it and they would be sent. Again, the boxes never arrived. In fact, nothing ever arrived at all (bills, notices, etc.)

Until last week...

Right next to me as I type I have a collection notice dated Sept. 22 from Credit Protection Asssociation L.P. that says we owe $475.93, $438 of which is for the cable boxes and $37.93 for "service balance." Additionally (and very interestingly) a portion of the boilerplate text says "Pursuant to the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the thirty (30) day validation period concerning the validity of your debt has now passed without you seeking to verify the debt..." There is also a bulletted item on the notice that says, "you have: Refused to pay your outstanding debt [and] Repeatedly desregarded our past notices."

Of course, no such notification has ever been received, not by Charter or this Credit Protection Association, not during the phone calls to discuss the boxes or at any other time. The boxes were never received and even Charter admitted they failed the first time to send them (they now say that the boxes were sent the second time around and referred me to the collection company.)

The bottom line is that we understood our bill was paid, we had no reason to believe otherwise (it all happened on the phone,) we were sent nothing in the mail (though they obviously have our correct address) to send back the boxes, we had multiple conversations with Charter people about the boxes (our effort, not theirs) and no one brought any outstanding balance to our attention and no bills were sent (though Charter says one was issued on Aug. 11) and no notification was received by Credit Protection Association until now (which the collection notice falsely stated had happened.)

So, they can simply do and say what they want, right??? Charter can fail to send the boxes multiple times, not contact us about the bill they say we didn't pay and about the cable boxes they didn't receive from us and then send us to collections???!!! And Credit Protection Association can flat out lie and say that we have already been notified and imply that we have given up our rights under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act by "repeatedly disregarding our past notices" that never happened???!!! They can all want only damage our credit as they see fit to cover their own tracks???!!!

I'm furious... (does it show?) This is just the beginning, Charter. We tried to do what was right and Charter screwed us for what reason???!!! What do they get out of this??? How does this help them (any of them) make money? What kind of business practice is this? The only thing that showed up was the collection notice, which proves they had our new address and proves that we get mail at that address!

I've got two completely unusable cable boxes taking up space that I would have been plenty happy to put into two free boxes to ship back to Charter and a tiny bill for $37.93 that I would have been rabidly happy to pay if I had known of its existence and the idiocy that was to come (yes, we are having our mail forwarded in case they sent it to the old address.) Instead I have a black smear on our credit and a huge mess of crap to untangle through no fault of our own with a collection agency breathing down our necks.

Dear Charter Communications,

We were never late with our bill; we paid a good-sized (read profitable) bill every month for about three years of service; communicated with you about the end of our service in a timely manner and voluntarily communicated with you when we didn't receive the boxes to return the cable boxes the first time around. What did we do to you to be crushed under the weight of your bureaucratic clusterfu%#? I'd love nothing more than to be contacted and have this resolved in an amicable and fair fashion and I will acknowledge it on this site if it happens, but I don't expect that will occur. Prove me wrong.

Furious in Lake O
Lake Oswego, Oregon
U.S.A.

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