I had a smiliar experience with Sprint starting in March. $381.45 bill sent to Diversified Consultants. If not for this Board, I would not be monitoring my credit so closely.
Long story short, call Div Consul and they were useless and said they could only remove it if Sprint asked them to. I could however pay the collection and they would mark as updated/Paid. I wanted it deleted.
So I skipped the middle man and called Sprint. Had to find my account and once they did, I went round and round with a CSR who kept saying their was nothing they could do. Phone calls to sprint continued for 3 consecutive days, same answer.
Finally on the third day, I asked to speak to a supervisor, who at least said the PFD decision would need to come from finance department. I spoke to a gentleman in finance dept and he agreed paying the debt that Sprint would remove it from CB. Mind I documented person I spoke with name, postition, phone #, date, time and requested the call transaction #. I finally asked that my accout be updated with the information of the calls, so that I would not have to repeat myself.
This proved useful as, every rep would be able to read through the notes. They would not give me anything in writing, still I bit the bullet with my notes and paid the account. The CSR informed me that it could take 3 - 4 weeks before collection was off each CB.
It took 3 subsequent calls to sprint after this, the last coming last Tuesday, because collection have come off all CBs except for Experian. After that call and going over my notes, they said to give it a few days and it should be off. Friday it came off. So in my case the pay for delete did work, I probably should have asked for something in writing but oh well it is off.
I hope you can get the same results.
Starting Score: 550 (Aug 2014)
Current Score: EX:641, EQ:628, TU:619
Goal Score: 700 across the board
