Hi,

I hope someone can give some suggestion how to deal with this. Here is the story. I came to US to work in 2007. I know US is a country running based on credit. So since then I carefully take care of my credit. I didn't miss a single payment. But still bad thing happened to me. We lived in an apartment from June 2007 to June 2008. After we moved out, the apartment send me a statement of  $1250 damage panelty and $19.57 utility fee. I absolutely disagreed on that because when we moved the apartment was in bad condition. I asked them to replace carpet etc. They didn't instead the sales rep crossed out the move out list with a very big "OK". We were in hurry to find a place then so we moved in. Out of the $1250 claim only $150 we agreed on because it was truly our damage. After I wrote them immediately an letter regarding this disagreement, I didn't receive any communication from them until the collection agency called me on 9/25/2009. The bad thing is that they already reported this to all 3 report bureaus in June, 2009. The collector asked me to pay the debt. I said I didnt agree on that. He said you had no choice but pay. Even later he offered me 20% discount. But my concern is my credit. My credit score went down from 750 to 650 because of this. Fortunately I bought my first house in US right before they reported to the credit bureaus. I didn't know any of these but the call from them in Sep, 2009. I went to the apartment management who said I need to deal with the collection. I wrote an letter to the collection to ask the validation or anything that show the amount I owe them. But they didn't respond anything yet. Also out of the amount ($1,269.57) they claimed I already paid $19.57 for the utility at that time. Now the negative report on both my wife and my credit report. She got refused for the first credit card. I must say we both are very careful for our credit. And never late for anything. But this really put us in trouble. Even I agreed to pay the amount to buy a lesson, the collection said they wouldn't take off the records for us from the credit files. So I don't know what I should do now. Waiting for the collector to sue me? Or I can take some action to protect myself. I don't want to pay the debt and meanwhile get a negative record for 7 years. Because it is not fair to us. We didn't get a chance to talk to the apartment about the debt (probably we should have gone there to discuss with them, but I think I already wrote them a mail, it should be pending on their side). Any suggestions highly appreciated.

Julian