Thousands of people in Ottawa have seen their credit score dip or outright plummet because of old tickets and fines. Some go back as far as 2003.
“In January, the City contracted a new private collections agencies (sic) through a competitive process. Financial Debt Recovery (FDR) is the final collection agency in the process and only collects debts that have already been at previous City-contracted collection agencies and remain unpaid,” said Joseph Muhuni, deputy city treasurer revenue, in a statement to CTV News Ottawa.
“FDR attempted to collect the debt and to date, has subsequently reported 103,000 unpaid Provincial Offences Act fines and 3,000 unpaid water bills to the credit bureau.”
3 weeks ago I received a call from the city of Ottawa advising me that a red light ticket from 2019 was going to collections.
I have not lived in Ottawa for over 4 years. They claimed they were unable to reach me all those years, despite always updating my drivers license when I moved.
No option to pay it, just a notification that it went to collections. First time I had ever known I had gotten a red light ticket. Now there is a collection to my name and my credit score dropped 300 points.
That’s some bullshit.
