Weird title, let me explain. I recently had my roommate move out and kept the house. While moving the bills that he had over I ran into a problem. Apparently somehow 3 years prior when I cancelled my water bill that had told me it was my final bill on the phone, so I paid the 120 ish dollars and didn't think about it again. Well a year or so back I randomly had 26.06 taken from my taxes and all it said was "towninkansas collections". I figured I had gotten a parking ticket or something along those lines that had maybe blown away, it was only 26 dollars not worth the headache of fighting. Well turns out the water company rep was wrong, they charged me for 2 more days of service but I never knew they charged me for 2 more days. So while moving the bills over they tell me that I still owed 26.06. Lightbulb moment, so I was like oh was that your bill that went to collections?? She said they would review it and so forth. Well then I get an email that said my account would say 0 because it was sent to collections but I still needed to pay the 26.06 to get the water started. I called and asked if that was what they meant and the lady got kinda snippy and insinuated I should of just paid it to begin with. (Like after never missing a payment I wanted 26.06 to go to collections?!) Anyway, I paid the bill just to get the water in my name. Now I'm just confused because I was charged 26.06 twice, how can the water company sell my debt and then still collect on it? Given I think they just do what they want at this point because you have to have water and they are the only option.

Tl;Dr utility company in my town sold a small debt but then made me pay it at a later date to start utilities.