can personal debt be recalled after being outsourced to creditor / collection agency?
 

Have an ongoing dispute with a contractor that did very shoddy work. <$1000 home reno. I will eventually need to get it redone. I have yet to pay their invoice but they recently involved a pre litigation mediator / creditor.

I spoke with the creditor and they did not purchase / own the debt. Should I settle directly with the contractor or the creditor (pre-litigation mediator)?

What guarantee do I have after payment that my credit won't be affected?

i had an issue with a bank (their error) and it was outsourced to a 3rd party collections.

after dealing with the bank to prove it was their error and i jumped through many hoops, i believe they called off the hounds.

may not be applicable to your scenario though.

AFAIK, they may be able to contract a collections agency but won't be able to affect your "credit". Two different tiers of collections. The ones you don't want to fuck around with are government and any large organization where contracts/etc have been signed like utilities and or banks.

Second tier collections like the ones that parking ticket companys like to use have zero recourse other than try to pester you into paying.

Yeah I had a dispute with a hazmat contractor, I asked to do an assessment/testing on a house I nearly bought (was in subject clearing phase).

I was clear on the deadline I needed for the report when I called the company (so that I could evaluate before subject close date), who said "shouldn't be a problem".

After that I didn't hear a word from company until 2 weeks after the subject clear date (which I did not clear and cancelled the house purchase) when the report showed up in my inbox.

I tossed that in the trash as it was no good to me at that point.

Then I got an invoice in the mail, which I threw in the trash. Then started getting past due notices, and phone calls from their AP person to which I ignored.

Then a letter from some collections agency in Texas showed up, so I called and said "The report came 2 weeks after the agreed deadline" the person on the other end asked "did that affect your decision to not buy the house", "Yes it definately did".

And that was the end of it, never heard from them again. Nothing ever affected my credit.

In your case, if you refuse to pay the worst that can happen is that the contractor can try to take you to small claims. Probably not worth it for them under $1000, but you don't need to worry about your credit rating.