I recently received a letter from a company called <Removed> in regards to a $510 overdraft I have on an old paypal account. I found this very strange, as I had previously been informed by a paypal representative through a phone call that they wouldn't pursue a debt collector and that the debt wouldn't affect my credit score. The letter says that I have 30 days to pay off this debt or it will be put permanently on my record, and tells me to pay it through a site called <Removed>. I found it weird that it wasn't asking me to do this through paypal in any capacity, and upon further investigation, I'm starting to believe that this is a scam. here are a few reasons why:
Firstly, the site <Removed> isn't the site of ACI; it's <Removed>. That site even has it's own section to arrange payment.
Secondly, the letter claims that the company is based in Amherst, New York, but the letter seemed to have been sent from Boerne, Texas. I've encountered scams before and one of the textbook signs of them being fish is inconsistencies with addresses. That puts this letter under suspect.
In addition, there have been numerous forum posts on here mentioning letters like these seemingly from the same source with the same site attached, and most of them point to this as being part of the same scam. I'm starting to believe that's the case here as well, but since those posts also confirmed that <Removed> IS PayPals collection agency, I don't want to ignore this only for it to actually be legit.
Is there any way I can confirm that the letter I received is legitimate? Who should I contact to find out what I should do going forward? Because this whole thing is incredibly fishy, especially the fact that they don't want any of this to be done through paypal and that it doesn't mention anything about the debt or my account apart from the value of the overdraft, but I want to be 100% certain that this is a scam before I ignore it to avoid potentially serious consequences of being incorrect.
