Can an old collection be reported as recently opened?

[delaney1]

I was looking at DH's credit report on Credit Karma today and it shows a "new collection added". The first collection bill I can find for this cell phone debt is 7/27/2013. The next bill with a new company is dated 2/6/2014. In May of this year, my husband got a letter from a third collection company who now owned the debt. So why are we getting a new alert on his credit report which states "one new debt was transferred" opened 4/14/2015 and last reported 6/19/2015?

Is this something we can dispute because they're making it seem like it's a new debt? It was originally defaulted on with Verizon sometime in 2012 when hubby lost his job.

[Anonymous]

You should pull his reports from annualcreditreport.com to get his actual reports and see what they say. Accounts can read as opened by the collection agency but the date of first Deliquency is the date that determines how old the collection is.

[RobertEG]

A debt collector can report the Open date for their collection as being the date they received their collection authority. 

It has nothing to do with the date of the debt, and is separate from the Open date of the creditor account.

Any reorted collection, regardless of when Opened or reported, has a credit report exclusion date of no later than 7 years plus 180 days from the date of your first delinquency (DOFD) on the account with the original creditor (OC).

The debt collector was required to obtain the DOFD from the OC and report that date to the CRA no later than 90 days after they reported their collection.

That is the date you need to check for accuracy.