I probably shouldn’t like getting mail. I get a lot of bills. But I still eagerly await the mail delivery, sometimes even on Sundays and holidays because I forget which day it is. And sometimes I’m rewarded with good mail, like cards and postcards from friends and family.
Saturday, if not a good mail day, was at least an interesting one, with three items of note.
- One was a $5.00 gift card to a grocery store. My husband had purchased a high-fiber cereal thinking it would be a healthy food for the kids. I ate some and was surprised by its sweetness. A close look at the ingredients list revealed that it contained aspartame. Nowhere else on the box was there any indication that it had aspartame. I was angry, so I called to complain. I hope they listened to what I had to say and will either remove the aspartame or mark the box more clearly. In any event, I’m glad we got our money back.
- The second item was a bill from a collections agency. The original bill had fallen off my radar and it would have been nice if they had at least called us before resorting to a collections agency. I certainly could have and would have paid them their $20.00 had they simply reminded me. I’d much rather have paid the original company than a collections agency. It’s sad that so many businesses operate this way these days.
- The third thing was my much anticipated rejection letter. It was a disappointment, actually, but not because my story didn’t get published. The disappointment was the boilerplate wording. In this letter was a list of reasons why a story might be rejected, and someone had checked off “doesn’t meet our current needs.” As feedback goes, it’s not terribly negative, but it’s also not terribly instructive. I wish they had included some explanation of what they do want.
So I’ve got $5.00 to spend and a check to write. Those things are easily done. But I also have an unwanted story and I’m not sure what to do with it. Publish it here? Look for another magazine publisher who might be interested in it? Attempt to illustrate it and turn it into a book for my kids? Tuck it in a drawer and forget about it? I’m not sure.
Send it out again!
Also, regarding the collection agency, I believe it is always better to pay the original company, although I don’t remember precisely why. Maybe it gets reported differently to credit agencies? The exception to this rule is when you have settled with a company on paying a certain percentage of a bill (such as is customary with many hospitals) and when a collection agency comes after you for the difference years later. Then you shouldn’t pay it at all because it revives it on your credit report. (Someone came after the son of one of my mother’s friends after they bought a hospital’s “debt.”)
I think you are probably right about paying the original company. I was thinking that if they had sold the debt that I had to pay the collections agency. But that’s not really fair to me, is it? I didn’t choose the collections agency. So I’ll probably try paying the original company and see what happens.