Get A Collection Off Credit Report

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If you are trying to clean up your credit and have received your credit reports, you might have noticed an account or two with “debt collection” marked as the final disposition. To a potential lender, debt collection looks terrible on your credit report. It means that an account has gone so severely in arrears that the initial creditor can no longer expect payment from you after several attempts, and has turned the account over to a service specifically designed to get money from late-payers.

If you have any items like this on your credit report, your best bet is to try to get them removed altogether. Use a dispute letter like the ones offered by Credit Elves, and try to get these detrimental items marked as Paid or Current. Contact the debt collector directly by phone, and then follow up with a letter to try to get them removed altogether. Do the same thing with the reporting agency or agencies (it might show up on more than one report). If the debts are legitimate, then try to negotiate the amount down to a more management level for you, or consider just doing what you can, if you can. Know ...
... that in seven years, it’s the law that creditors must remove such negative marks on your credit report. So if you have an outstanding credit event that is older than seven years, it’s a lock that you can get that item removed as being “Out of Date.” Follow up to make sure it’s gone. Even if you haven’t paid the amount owed, if the debt is older than seven years, it has to come off your credit report.

Get everything in writing. Disputing a negotiation later when you have no written documentation to back up your claims is next to impossible, and only works in the collection company’s favor.

The best-case scenario for dealing with a collection agency is to contact them and arrange to have the debt reduced with the caveat that you pay that amount immediately, and request that the creditor remove “collection” off your credit report. If they will not do that, offer to pay the full amount in exchange for removal of the negative “collection” item. If neither idea works for them, the next best thing you can hope for it that they accept payment in full and mark the account as “Paid in Full” instead of in Collections. If you’ve negotiated any terms with the collection agency, and your report does not come back later with a satisfactory disposition, go back to the credit reporting agencies and collection agencies and pester them until they do. Whoever is looking at your credit report certainly is not going to do it for you; it’s up to you to keep after these matters until they are resolved. The longer you put it off, the longer it lingers on your report, hurting severely any chances you might have of getting a loan for a house, business or car.