Why are you doing this to me, MCV?

My husband suffered a slight injury on the job in the spring of 2008 at VCU and was sent to the campus clinic at MCV to check it out. I didn't even know about it until a year later when the Virginia taxation bureau sent me a letter saying my state refund check was being held because MCV had a claim on it.

I called MCV and found out about the 2008 incident. It was a workman's comp claim, but had been billed to my husband's personal insurance, which never paid it, never told us they hadn't paid it, and MCV never billed us. The lady at MCV's finance office found paperwork on file that everything I had told her was true and assured me she would take care of it.

I assumed all was well because the state released our piddling state refund check to us about a month later.

A year later I get a letter from Guitar Center saying my husband's credit line had been slashed by two-thirds because of "serious delinquencies" on his credit report. I was entitled to a free Equifax report as a result. I requested it online, looked at the delinquencies and there was MCV with a $350 "charge off" from that same workman's comp incident in 2008. "Charge off" is a bad word in the world of credit reports.

I called MCV again. Oh yeah, she says. I see all that. Well, workman's comp never paid it, so that's why it's listed as a charge-off. They requested your husband's medical records and I don't see that they were ever sent.

In other words, MCV never sent MCV the health records, so it's labeled as a "charge off" on my husband's social security number and reported to the credit bureau as a "serious delinquency." Now I have credit cards crashing all around my head. They need any excuse they can find to jack up rates to 33.33% on outstanding balances.

Well, it's not really MCV asking MCV for health records, she says. Workman's comp for VCU employees is handled by Managed Care Innovations, an outside contractor. They asked for his health records.

And MCV didn't send them? I asked.

Hmm, no, she says.

Do I need to call them? I ask. Who do I call? How do I fix this? Because I know you feel like the case is closed because you've charged it off, and Managed Care Innovations doesn't care because without medical records, they don't have to pay, so they feel like the case is closed, but this is destroying my credit. Plus, Equifax is blabbing this all over credit land, and they could care less about what screw-up is behind this charge off, and now Guitar Center feels the case is closed. They've branded us with the scarlet letter of Serious Delinquents, even though I have paid off many years of guitar strings, reverb pedals and road cases without ever being late once.

I'll handle it, she says.

Where have I heard that before?