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I pulled my credit report and saw that Verizon has placed that I owe them $395 from when I left them in April 2013. It was a surprise to me; I thought I had paid them in full. I can't find records of where I did pay them, so, perhaps I do owe the money. I haven't had a blemish on my credit for a long, long time. This is the only bad thing on my report in 7 years. I don't recall owing them this much; I believe it was $325 when I closed the account and I thought I paid it. Never the less, if I'm wrong ,and I did owe them and didn't pay it, I never got any notice of it before now! I haven't moved since I closed the account either, and my phone number hasn't changed. But I digress.... Here's the situation. I called Verzon because the report on all three reports say "verizon wireless" and the status says "In collections", but it doesn't say with who. Verizon told me that it is with CBE group. I did some reading on this website before I called verizon, so I had some idea of what I was trying to gather information wise. The representative in Verizon's "collections/disputes" department told me she could no longer see any details of the account, only that I had an account and that I owed $395. She could not see why I owed this amount, could not take any payments from me, could not send me any copies of statements and could not send me anything that would validate that I owe that amount. At this point, she said, they handed it off to CBE group, and that they would handle everything from here. I called CBE group, the number she gave me. CBE group looked up my name, my ssn and the account number Verizon gave me. They can not find me. They stated they have no account for me, they show no record of ever having an account for me. How do I remove this from my report, then? I forsee the following problem. If I dispute it through the CRA's, they contact verizon - as the account is listed on my report as Verizon wireless, not CBE group, and verizon "verifies" the debt. If I dispute with CBE, they will say they don't have any record, but when I send this to the CRA, the CRA's will say, well, that's fine but the debt is from Verizon, not CBE. If I send it to verizon, verizon will say talk to CBE. It also looks like the validation letters and process are not for the orginal creditor to validate, but for collection agencies only. I don't know what to do from here. HELP!?!

I read on another board that collections accounts should not be reporting terms. I have two collection accounts that I am in the process of disputing. Both of these accounts are listed on my credit report as collection accounts and both term 1 month. I read that if I never entered into any type of agreement with the collection agency that this should not be listed with terms since no terms were agreed upon. Does anyone think this would be a valid and succesful way to dispute these items with the credit bureaus?