Not to throw more legalese at you, but it may be useful during your current "holding period." to firm things up. So I offer some suggestions.
You are apparently waiting now to see if the Midland CA drops at 7 1/2 years from its DOFD, thus enabling you to contest its continued inclusion in your CR under FRCA 605(c).
Once that momentous date occurs, it may then result in a dispute on your part of the DOFD that is contained in your CR vs what you consider to be the actual DOFD.
So, you need to know two things, in prepartation. First, what is the DOFD that you can prove based on your own account records, and second, does this differ from the DOFD that has been reported to your credit file?
Never accept any statement of DOFD in your current consumer CR as gospel.
What is this mystical DOFD stored in your credit file, who reported it, and most importantly, how to do definatively get it?
The legal DOFD in your CR is stored as your "FCRA Compliance Date/Date of First Delinquency" in your credit file under their reporting field 25 to the base segement of your credit file.
It gets there under several alternatives. all of which are governed by FCRA 623(a)(5)
All collections must, by definition, be based on an OC account. The DOFD occurs under the time the account was open and active with the OC, and thus the OC is THE primary source for determination of the DOFD.
So FCRA 623(a)(5) works this way.
IF the OC had made any prior credit reporting to the CRA prior to doing a charge-off or referall to a debt collector, they were required, under FCRA 623(a)(5)(A), to have, within 90-days, report the DOFD to the CRA, thus giving the CRA a date to do their 180-days plus 7 year calculation of it CR deletion date.
If, however, in those rare cases where the OC made no prior reporting to a CRA, then the contingency provisons of FCRA 605(a)(5)(B)(ii) and (iii) kick in. How can a debt collector possiblly determine the DOFD on the OC, of which they were not even a party to? The answer is they really cant. So the FCRA makes some attempt to still get a DOFD, but the process is far from definative. That is a very subjective process that requires the debt collector to first contact the OC, and take "reasonble measures" to obtain from them the DOFD.
If those "reasonable meaures" get no OC response, then they can "guess" at the DOFD, as long as their "guess" at least precedes the date that they were referred collection authorization. Not a very precise determination of DOFD, and certainly disputable.
Now, back to practicality. Under the FCRA, you dont have to rely on crummy consumer credit reports to obtain the dates of anything in your credit file.
You can get it directly from the CRA. That is what FCRA 609 is all about.
Under FCRA 609(a) you have the right to file, at any time, a request for disclosure of any or all specified items of information in your credit file. Such requests are not free of charge, but all they require is identification sought, and the payment of the current fee of ($10.50) to the CRA (see FCRA 612(f)).
This is NOT a request for a plain vanilla consumer CR. It is is direct request to the CRA for all inforamtion in your credit file. Specifically identify the two items of information requested as the date currentlly stored in your credit file as the "FCRA Compliance Date/Date of First Delinquendcy," and the date reported to them in compliance with FCRA 623(a)(5).
You then have the definative, though not necessarily accurate, DOFD that the CRA is using to determine your 180-day plus 7 years CR elimination date, and can thus determine in advance whether you wish to dispute the accuracy of that reported date when compared with your records, should the CA still remain in your CR.
