--- title: When a Debt Collector Demands $40,000 for a $300 Loan description: One woman's debt collection nightmare authors: - name: Ian Salisbury role: Senior Editor url: https://money.com/author/ian-salisbury-2/ bio: Ian Salisbury was a senior editor at Money, focusing on investing, banks and mortgage. at_money_since: 2013 articles: 91 covers: - Loans - Economy and Politics - Housing - Investing - Lifestyle - Mortgages - Personal Finance - Retirement - Shopping - Taxes former_staff: true published: '2016-05-26T20:29:33.000Z' modified: '2016-05-26T20:29:33.000Z' section: Loans tags: - CFPB - Consumer Financial Protection Bureau - Debt Collectors - payday loans word_count: 290 canonical: https://money.com/debt-collector-wanted-40000-for-300-loan/ type: Article source: structured-blocks --- > **Disclosure:** We may earn a fee if you click on the links below. Compensation does not determine ranking. Not all brands are included. [Learn more](https://money.com/page/disclaimer/). ![Temptation, loan trap isolated on blue](https://img.money.com/2016/05/gettyimages-165653148.jpg) *borrowers can get more than they bargained for* An Oregon woman is fighting a debt collector after the company billed her more than $40,000 to cover a $300 loan--one she was not legally obliged to repay in the first place. In August 2013, Stephanie Banks who was then battling lung cancer used her car as collateral to secure a $300 loan from Rapid Cash, a payday lender, to help make ends meet. Banks, now 62, filed for bankruptcy the following year, discharging the loan. But last August, she received a bill not just for the $300 plus interest, but for $40,371, from Ad Astra, a collection agency. Unsure what to do, Banks got pro-bono help from local consumer lawyer Michael Fuller who helped her file an arbitration claim and from OregonLive, the Web site of the Oregonian newspaper, which [reported on her story in early May](http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2016/05/300_loan_balloons_into_40000_d.html). Several days later Rapid Cash [offered OregonLive an explanation](http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2016/05/misplaced_decimal_point_bankru.html): The collection agency had misplaced a decimal point in her bill -- the number should have been $403.71 -- and also billed her erroneously since the bankruptcy meant she no longer needed to repay the loan. Fuller told OregonLive that the two companies had indeed previously admitted making a mistake, but entity admitted liability. While Banks was offered $5,000 in compensation, Fuller said she intended to fight the claim in arbitration because that wasn't enough to cover her legal fees and because she would owe taxes on it. A spokeswoman for Rapid Cash offered a [fuller account to Yahoo Finance last week](http://finance.yahoo.com/news/40000-payday-loan-error-typo-rapid-cash-205044891.html). “We had a system glitch that day that caused some incorrect letters to be sent out," she told the Web site, adding that corrected letters were sent out once it discovered the glitch. 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