<prompt> Human: While I was back in college in 2013 I was leasing an apartment for my junior year with a couple friends. I signed my part of the lease and sent it to my father to cosign. He wouldnt cosign the lease, so when I presented that to the leasing office they stated I wasnt able to move into the apartment and was never given keys. I wasnt doing to well in school at that point anyway so I ran off and enlisted in the military. Somewhere in the process of all of that my account was sent to a collections agency. Fast forward to today, served my time and got out, now I am hoping to land a job that requires an elevated security clearance. It is likely they find that derogatory remark on my credit history which is otherwise spotless. Do I have grounds to dispute the collection or am I still liable for the full amount of rent? I never physically inhabited the apartment so I would be paying for a service that was never provided.Thank you in advance!Assistant: This sounds like a legitimate dispute. If they told you in writing they required a cosigner and you couldnt provide one, then the lease is not enforceable.This doesnt even touch on the fact that they didnt uphold their end of the lease by providing the keys.Hope you have documentation for all this. But the first thing you should do is ask the collection agency to validate the debt in writing. I am guessing they wont be able to do that. Human: I will do that. Just found the address. Thank you!  <response>: Just a heads-up that once youve sorted this out and the current collection agency drops their claim, you will almost certainly receive the same still completely erroneous claim from a different company 6-12 months from now. This happened to me with Comcast due to a non-issue I had with them three years ago. Its still happening to this day, with a series of ever-smaller-potatoes collections companies. 