Collections are not accounts of/with the consumer, they are only "accounts" in the sense of reporting to a CRA.
The "Open Date" for a collection is unrelated to the open date of an account between a creditor and a consumer.
Debt collectors can report the Open Date of their collection as being the date they received collection authority, which can be any time after the DOFD. It is not uncommon for a debt collector to report the Open Date as their first reporting to a CRA. The CRA credit reporting manual does not clearly restrict the Open Date for a collection as being the specific date they first obtained collection authority as opposed to when they first report to a CRA, so dispute of the accuracy of the Open Date is very questionable as to the specific CRA reporting requirement.
Regardless, the Open Date for a collection does not enter into scoring or effect the ultimate exclusion date of the collection, which is based ONLY on the DOFD. Thus, disputes of the Open Date for a collection are apt to be very confusing, and of dubious value on any substantive scoring or exclusion issues. I would not challenge a few days, or even months, in discrepancy between Open Date reported to differing CRAs. It is essentially a side-show.
