It is not, in my opinion, always preferable to pay the OC, and it can be very beneficail to negotiate with a debt collector.
If either prevention of reporting of a colleciton, or deleiton of an already reported collection, is your goal, then only an agreement with the debt collector can direclty address their own reporting. If they will either accept a PFD, or agree not to report if they have not yet done so, then that would be my recommended path.
To compel deletion or lack of reporting by a debt collector, it is necessary to first obtain agreement from the OC that they will terminate their assigned collection authority to the debt collector PRIOR to accepting your payment. They may either decline to do so, or not actually termiante prior to accepting your payment. Then, thtere is no basis for requiring the debt collector not ro report, or to delete their prior reporting.
The direct approach of obtaining agreement wiht the debt collector is, in my opinion, preferable.
Sending a DV may also not be approperiate.
If more than 30 days has elapesed since dunning notice, a DV would be untimely, and the debt collector could simply ignore it.
Even if timely, the debt collector has no period for or requirment to send validation, and the cease collection bar imposed by the DV will prevent any PFD or pay for not reportng negotiations until they have first validated. Thus, the consumer is in limbo until the debt collector chooses to send validation.
