Thank you for the reply. I've asked the HR team at CA why it was sent to collections but haven't heard back yet. Going through their ex-employee portal, there are notes that emails were sent to my old email address at CA, which - surprise! - no longer existed since I was no longer an employee at that point. They still know my home address and phone number, so there is zero reason why a postal letter from collections should have been the first knowledge of the debt on my end.

Should I contact the collections agency at all? Or, if they call, should I even answer? Not sure what precedents or expectations are set if I talk to them.

Also, I've read that if I negotiate a lower payment with collections, it would be reported as "paid as agreed" instead of "paid in full". Would this affect my credit at all? Would this even being sent to collections in the first place do anything to my credit?

And, oh yes, I'm going to waste as much of their time as possible!

Yes, they had us accept and sign the job offer for the same position at the new company - so I'm guessing it's baked into that

They way it was worded is that at the termination of business with CA - anyone who had a positive PTO balance was paid that amount, and anyone with a negative PTO balance (me) was charged.

I had the same thought as you mentioned, where the PTO balance would have carried over to the new company, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Both HR departments are being very specific that the PTO balances from each company are completely separate and since I used more than I had when working for CA, I am responsible.

Thanks for the reply. I agree this sounds list a complete waste of time/resources for them, CA is definitely a company most people have heard of and while it's a decent amount of money to me, it's nothing to them. I guess the computer tells them that I was overpaid (and I agree, I was), so they're going to chase it... It's just the way they went about it that's frustrating.

Thanks for the reply - the ex-employee portal shows the overpayment/debt in detail - so the proof is there, I'm not disputing this part of it. But yeah, as others have pointed out, it's a really crappy thing for them to come back 6 months down the line and ask for money back (especially considering how trivial the amount is to CA - they're probably a fortune 50 company).

I've contacted my new HR department and their response was pretty much "This is between you and CA now, we have nothing to do with it."