A "negative account" is an overall descriptor that simply means the account is currently not in good-standing.
The term does not identify the level of delinquency, and thus it could vary from a minor 30-late up to a 180+ late or charge-off.
Charge-offs are as bad as it gets under reporting by the OC, and collections reported by debt collectors are additional and generally at the equiv score impact to a charge-off.
Your credit report can include a reference by the OC to their referral for collection, but an actual "collection" for scoring purposes is whent the debt collector actually reports their collection to the CRA. Debt collector reporting is stored in an entirely different segment of the consumer credit file.
Commerical credit reports sometimes blur that distinction.
Can you post a screen shot of the portion of the credit report at issue?
