Have you tried contacting the owner or the management company directly? They
may be able to research it.
Do you know what your credit scores are? It would be good to get a feel for
how much damage it is doing.

How is the collection reporting it on your credit report? Are they assigning
a 9 to each month including 10/03? If so they it might not go for some time
away until you work something out with them. The easiest way to do that
would be to contact them and offer to settle for less than the full amount.
Chances are they will take 30-75% of the debt. Let them know that while you
are under no pressure to do this and you feel it is wrong, you are willing
to do "something" just to clear it up. Harsh but I don't think you have a
lot of options and it is best to get the bad mark on your credit to start
"aging" so it's impact will begin to diminish. Also if you apply for a low
interest conventional mortgage, especially through Fannie Mae or something
similar, they are probably going to require this to be paid off at or before
closing. You will be under pressure then and there fore have less leverage.

Ken
Take Control of Your Finances http://fxcredit.com
to e-mail me lose the "not"

Need a great mortgage calculator that will generate amortization tables? Try
http://fxcredit.com/mortgage-calculator.php

If you can't prove you paid it the easiest thing to do might be to call them
and
"Russ" <russ[at]russ.net> wrote in message
news:a586d8cf.0311011438.d8df3d6[at]posting.google.com...
- quote -

I lived in an apartment for about 8 months about 5 years ago. We
broke the lease early and had to pay a reletting fee. No biggie.
About 3-4 years later (after living in our new house for 3-4 years),
we received a collection notice from a collection agency saying that
we owed $450 to our apartment complex for a end of lease termination.
First of all, we never received a bill for this, second of all, we
paid the reletting fee which was the end of lease termination fee.

Unfortunately, I don't remember HOW we paid, and we've changed bank
accounts since then. I couldn't find any record from years ago of
paying it, so I can only assume that I may have paid cash?

At any rate, now every time I get my credit report, it shows up there
that we have a collection and it's disputed. How do we go about
taking care of this besides paying them the stupid $450? Is it going
to affect me greatly? My credit report is pretty squeaky clean other
than that. Should I just assume I screwed up and pay them? I really
think I already paid them but I guess not having a receipt or record
on my bank statment doesn't help much .