Question about paid collection

[willswim]

Hey all, I have a paid med. collection on my EX that doesn't list when it will go to a positive status. It has a date opened of 7/2002 and a date of status of 3/2004 which is probably when I paid it. Which date do I go by as to when it should fall off? Also do collections hurt the entire time they are listed or do they decrease with age? Thanks for all the great info. Using advice from this forum my EQ has gone from 545 to 598 and my EX has gone from 550 to 607. Haven't checked TU yet.

[Anonymous]

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willswim wrote:
Hey all, I have a paid med. collection on my EX that doesn't list when it will go to a positive status. It has a date opened of 7/2002 and a date of status of 3/2004 which is probably when I paid it. Which date do I go by as to when it should fall off? Also do collections hurt the entire time they are listed or do they decrease with age? Thanks for all the great info. Using advice from this forum my EQ has gone from 545 to 598 and my EX has gone from 550 to 607. Haven't checked TU yet.

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When was the date of service? With medical, date of service is DOFD and it will be removed from your CR 7 - 7.5 years. If the CA opened the account in 7/2002....date of service was before then, which means sometime in the next year.

It won't go to a positive status, it will just be removed.

[Anonymous]

Just real quick and thank you for asking this question because I was going to

My sister in law has some PAID Charge-Offs/Collections that drop off between next year and 2012. My question is, would you send a dispute type letter to the CRA's begging them to delete these? or GW the CA/OC and ask if they could delete the entries? We are trying to get her credit up quickly and I thought why not start with ones already paid to have them deleted.

Thank you
Cujo

[Anonymous]

I have a small amount of experience suggesting that if a CA has received its payment already, especially if it's a good long time ago, they may not have much interest in keeping those items on your reports.

Then again, they don't have much reason to do anything extra for you, since they won't be getting any additional money for you no matter what.

I had a CA claiming I owed some small amount of money on an ancient long distance bill. I didn't know if this was accurate, but since it was a small amount, I paid it to get them to go away. Some time later, when I learned of the wonders of FICO, I disputed the account, and it was deleted...presumably because the CA didn't say "yes, this is real" or perhaps they never even responded at all.

In another case, I had a dispute regarding an medical bill, but again I paid the CA to get them to leave me alone. More than a year after payment, I called the CA, and reiterated my dispute, and they offered that if I'd only asked at the time of payment, they would have happily removed it from my report. They agreed to initiate the process then (I'm still waiting to see the results, but it hasn't been long).

At the end of the day, CAs want your money. Before they get it, they will go to great lengths to ensure that they do. This includes putting entries on your credit report. After they've got your money, they have no interest in going to any effort at all, because they have different fish to fry. This includes keeping entries on your credit report.

So...

I believe it's entirely possible that if you ask them after the fact to remove it, they will, because it's a small price to pay to get you to leave them alone (just like you might have paid them at the beginning for the same reason). Edit It takes time for them to keep things on your report while you're nagging them about it, and time is money...and what do they gain by it, if you've already paid?

Maybe I was just lucky in my case, but it does make some amount of sense.

Good luck.

Message Edited by cheddar on 04-23-2008 09:53 AM

[Anonymous]

Just a friendly reminder to all who have been participating in this thread that discussions involving disputing accurate information with a CRA are not permitted on the FICO Forums.  GW, PFD, etc are all acceptable topics for discussion, but disputing accurate information is not.  Please see the Credit Repair Discussion Guidelines stickied at the top of this forum, and please feel free to ask a Moderator in advance of posting if you're not sure whether your post will be acceptable.

Thanks to everyone for their cooperation!

Message Edited by cheddar on 04-23-2008 09:58 AM

[Anonymous]

Well, certainly one shouldn't be disputing something that they know to be accurate...but what if you simply don't know? What if you knew that you had an account with the company in question a very long time ago, but you haven't heard from them in years, and you don't know if you have any remaining balance, or what that balance might be?

For instance, after finding something on my credit report, I spent a fair bit of time on the phone with a long distance company from ages past, etc., in an attempt to discover if they could give me some info about a theoretical past account. I got bounced from department to department to department, only to discover that they, like I, had no records showing a past due balance from years ago.

Do I know with 100% certainty that I didn't have a past balance from years ago? No, I don't. I called the company with whom I had done business and asked, "do you think I have a past balance?" and they said they couldn't find anything (not "we found your account and we know you have no past balance," but rather "we have no record of your account" ).

Now, it is fair to say that I shouldn't be disputing things that I know to be correct, and I've never done so. But...do I have an obligation to not dispute something when I simply don't know whether it is accurate, and I can't say with 100% certainty that it is not correct? Is it wrong to use the dispute system as a method of saying "I'm not sure this is right," so that the other company can come back and say, "Yes, it is right, we've got the records," or alternatively, "Well, gee, we can't verify it either, sorry about that"?

How much effort must I spend attempting to get to the bottom of it with the OC before I go click the little dispute button, which I know will come up with an answer for me with very little effort on my part. I shouldn't be excessively lazy regarding tracking down my own accounts, nor turn myself into a nuisance to the CRAs, but the dispute process does exist for a reason. Is part of that reason simply "Help me get to the bottom of this"?

Message Edited by meadmaker on 04-23-2008 02:14 PM

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Just a friendly reminder to all who have been participating in this thread that discussions involving disputing accurate information with a CRA are not permitted on the FICO Forums. GW, PFD, etc are all acceptable topics for discussion, but disputing accurate information is not. Please see the Credit Repair Discussion Guidelines stickied at the top of this forum, and please feel free to ask a Moderator in advance of posting if you're not sure whether your post will be acceptable.

Thanks to everyone for their cooperation!

Message Edited by cheddar on 04-23-2008 09:58 AM

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Sorry Cheddar .. wasnt trying to break the rules I guess I should have worded my question differently. So when something is paid off and you would like it deleted, does that fall under those rules as well?

Cujo

[guiness56]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

Just a friendly reminder to all who have been participating in this thread that discussions involving disputing accurate information with a CRA are not permitted on the FICO Forums. GW, PFD, etc are all acceptable topics for discussion, but disputing accurate information is not. Please see the Credit Repair Discussion Guidelines stickied at the top of this forum, and please feel free to ask a Moderator in advance of posting if you're not sure whether your post will be acceptable.

Thanks to everyone for their cooperation!

Message Edited by cheddar on 04-23-2008 09:58 AM

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Sorry Cheddar .. wasnt trying to break the rules I guess I should have worded my question differently. So when something is paid off and you would like it deleted, does that fall under those rules as well?

Cujo

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In the case when something is paid and you would like it off you report, about the only option you have is a GW letter. They do not have to remove it but, if you are persistent they may.

[Anonymous]

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cujo_31 wrote:

Sorry Cheddar .. wasnt trying to break the rules I guess I should have worded my question differently. So when something is paid off and you would like it deleted, does that fall under those rules as well?

Cujo

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No worries.  As I said, my post was just intended as a friendly reminder.

If a legitimate and accurate collection is paid off and you'd like it deleted, the only advice we can give is to try to GW it.

I'm not sure where you're located, but keep in mind that some states have shorter reporting periods for paid collections than the 7.5 years specified in the FCRA.