Is This A Scam or What?
 

Yesterday my husband received a bill from Superior Asset Mangement stating that they were collecting a debt from Home Depot USA Tool Division in the amount of 82.79 for not returning a tool that he rented. The 800 # listed was not working and kept disconnecting after you hit #1 for English.

Weirder yet was that my husband never rented a tool from Home Depot, in fact, he's never rented any tools from anywhere.

Don't know what to make of this?? I think it's a scam.

Sounds like a scam to me. Does your husband have his own business? Small businesses have to be very careful of things like this, these bills come in and if they are under a certain amount they just pay up without really checking it. It even happened at the Alzheimer's Association I was doing volunteer work for. They would get bogus bills from companies.

look up this country on Ripoff Report | Scams, consumer complaints, and frauds reported.

i would callhome depot to see if they have record of the debt.

No, he doesn't own a small business at all.

He did call Home Depot and because it has nothing to do with the Home Depot Credit Card they had no clue what he was talking about. The whole thing is fishy and then not being able to call the number provided on the letter is even more bizarre. I did see that they came up on Rip Off Reports for TMobile, nothing about Home Depot though. . .:confused:

Yeah, that is strange. I would write them a letter and state your husband owes no debt to Home Deport nor has he ever rented any type of tool or anyone for that matter. Advise them to not send further notice on a debt that is not owed.

Yeah, I'm sure it hasn't anything to do with Home Depot, but you should report the bill to someone, I'm not sure who though. No way would I pay it.

Tell them to send a copy of the original invoice, and if they can't, to go pound sand.

Oh we aren't paying it at all. He's writing them a letter (since they don't have a working phone number) asking them to submit to him a copy of the supposed debt under the Fair Credit Reporting Act to see if he gets a response. It should be interesting to see this bill. Who can rent anything without using a credit card anyhow? Did someone actually say . . ."hey, I'm so and so and I'd like to rent this tool" and Home Depot said "sure, you don't need to put a deposit on your home depot credit card or any credit card for that matter, you take this tool for as long as you need, heck, don't even show us your driver's license, we believe you are who you say you are" LMAO!

Legit collection agencies are not always able to provide copies of original invoices. I know that the collection agencies that our company uses for medical bills can not. What they can do is provide info such as who placed it in collections, date the acct was placed with them and amount of original bill. I would call Home Depot and ask if this is one of the collection companies they use. If so, explain the situation, they should adv you how to procede and legit telephone numbers to call. You may have to call the corporate office for the info. Just do not ignore it, get to the bottom of it no matter what it takes. If you ignore it and it does happen to be legit, it can haunt you for a long time also if it is a case of mistaken id.
let us know what happens.

You probably never hear from them, they make their money on the people who don't check things out. You might be able to report this to your local police department, and since they used the mail, this would be a federal crime. These people usually get away with this because nobody ever reports it, and by the time someone does, they've moved on.

It might not hurt to get a copy of your credit reports also, all three bureaus. Legally you can obtain a copy from each one once per year at no charge. Go to www.annualcreditreport.com and you can get it without having to sign up for some service that charges you for monitoring like the one in those incredibly annoying TV commercials. You won't your credit score, but you will get a list of your current and past accounts as well as any recent inquiries.

Our credit report was done in October because we were interested in purchasing property in Florida. All came back great, nothing was on there that didn't belong. He's going to send out the letter and see what comes of it.

MIL got a notice from a "collection agency" about an outstanding debt from american express. Of course she freaked out, and thought it was real. She pays off her debt in full every month, and this particular card has not been used in a long time. The collection agency had her entire cc #. But I had to convince her it was not real bc if you default on your cc bills, the actual cc company will send you letter after letter after letter before sending out to collections (guess how I know :rolleyes:) BIL called the number and told them to send them a copy of the bill to see if it was valid. They said that WE were supposed to do that. BIL said no way, you guys find it out, I'm not doing anything, you guys have to prove it. They called him back a few days later from a local #, not a 800 number, which was beyond fishy. He said the same thing, and they have not contacted us again since.

Another time, I got a call from "verizon" saying I owed them money. I said you guys have to send me the bill to prove it bc we use at&t and have never used verizon ever. Never heard from them again.

They have to prove you owe the debt. Until they can, just tell them to go screw themselves.

I would turn the letter over to your local post office. Using the mail to send fraudulent notices is a huge no-no.

I agree 100%. I said to my husband that this was a scam from the get go because not once did we ever get a letter from Home Depot "tool division" stating we hadn't returned a tool (which he never rented) and to fork over the $82. His cc # isn't even on the bill it listed a "client file number" the whole thing stinks of scam . . .I hope they respond to his letter . . .should be interesting.