Questions about paid collection and score changes

[Anonymous]

Hello Friends,

I have a concern about a collection account from AT&T dated back from 2007 that I paid today 4/27/11. First this account was reported to all 3 bureaus but I disputed it and it was removed from Equifax and transunion but not Experian. when I closed my account with ATT 2 years ago in 2009, all my services were in good status and they even sent me a refund check of $38.00 that I overpaid them . However, ATT failed to inform that this balance was from its home entertainment service (video service), which is separate from Internet and phone. And I had to find out through a collection agency CMI.

Finally, I went ahead and paid this balance of $153.00 today, hoping to clear my Experian report & score.

 My concern and questions are these:

• Will this payment lower my Equifax and Transunion since this collection account was already deleted from those 2 reports three months ago?
• The collection company said that they will report to all 3 bureaus as paid collection. Is there any chance that this resurfaces on my fico, Equifax or Transunion and lower my scores?
• If so, what's the average deduction in score for a paid collection?

My current scores are as follow: Equifax (710), fico (720), Transunion (740) and Equifax (649).

Please advise…

[cw81]

Yes there is a possibility of  it  surfacing on your  EQ and TU  and it will definitely  drop your score but its impossible to say by how much there are too many variables.  I doesnt  really do much for your Experian either  a  paid collection is  still a  collection .  I will go out on a limb and say you probably did  not know that you could ask for a pay for delete while you had the leverage. At this time you don't have any leverage so you will have to rely on  Goodwill  do a search on  GW or  Good will letters and  you might be able to get them to delete the TL from you report.

[Anonymous]

Uhh, Jeez, I was worried about that drop. Thank you so much for your response CW81. At least I know now that my scores will drop. I will work on getting it removed, hopefully that will take me back to where I was. Meanwhile, will keep searching by how many points because I don’t want go below 650.

[Anonymous]

CW81,

I have another question:  you said that this payment won’t affect my Experian score; I mean I went through all this hassle for that report. The rest of the scores with other credit bureaus were fined.

So, the Experian would not even go up a bit or it will drop too?

Please advice,

Thanks.

[MarineVietVet]

Paid collections are not supposed to affect your score in any way IF the CA's and CRA's do their job right and everything is coded correctly.

And there is no average score increase or decrease for any particular action because we all have a different credit profile and it's constantly changing.

From a BK years ago to:
EX - 3/11 pulled by lender- 835, EQ - 2/11-816, TU - 2/11-782

"Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they've made a difference. The Marines don't have that problem".

[Anonymous]

Thanks MarineVietvet. As I always, I appreciate your feedback.

[Anonymous]

Hi Kadouboy,

Welcome!  Glad you're here and congrats on your hard work.

This isn't a direct answer to your question, but I want to ask you where you're pulling your scores from.

The main reason I ask is that you're concerned about that Experian score, but, depending on where you obtained it, it is likely a fake score - what we call a FAKO.

FAKO scores are often quite a bit different than real FICO scores - so it's best to ignore FAKO scores.  They can be quite upsetting.  And lenders don't use them.

You have three FICO scores:  An Experian FICO; an Equifax FICO; and a TransUnion FICO.  These are the scores lenders look at and the ones you want to pay attention to.  You can pull Equifax and TransUnion FICO scores here at myfico.com. 

In addition, there are many flavors of FAKO credit scores made available to the general public through various services.  Those are the ones to ignore.   

[Anonymous]

K. Good question BeamMEup and you're absolutely right. I think I should have started here before I made this payment. To answer to your question, I got my scores from the following:

• FICO (obviously here, this is the only place that I could get it and it is 720).
• Equifax from Equifax website,
• TU from Truecredit.com (I am about to cancel that because I Just found out that they are not in deed Transunion but a subsidiary). So I went ahead and ordered a copy from TU on the ph for 7.00 and I still haven’t received it yet.
• Last but not least, my Experian from Experian Website (http://www.experian.com/consumer/login.html).  Correction from post above: my Experian score is 649.

My current scores are as follow: Equifax (710), FICO (720), Transunion (740) and Equifax (649).

Thanks.

[MarineVietVet]

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@Anonymous wrote:

K. Good question BeamMEup and you're absolutely right. I think I should have started here before I made this payment. To answer to your question, I got my scores from the following:

• FICO (obviously here, this is the only place that I could get it and it is 720).Was this the TU or EQ score from myFICO?
• Equifax from Equifax website, This might or might not be an EQ FICO score. Recently EQ started selling their own proprietary "Equifax Credit Score" that is NOT a FICO score. Equifax will still sell you a FICO score but you have to look very hard to find it. You can get to it here: www.equifax.com/myfico-products.
• TU from Truecredit.com (I am about to cancel that because I Just found out that they are not in deed Transunion but a subsidiary). So I went ahead and ordered a copy from TU on the ph for 7.00 and I still haven’t received it yet. This as A FAKO score and not a TU FICO.
• Last but not least, my Experian from Experian Website (http://www.experian.com/consumer/login.html).  Correction from post above: my Experian score is 649. This is called a "Plus" score and is also a FAKO. No one has been able to buy their own Experian FICO score since February of 2009. Creditors can pull Experian and also there is a CU (PSECU) in Pennsylvania that supplies that information to it's members only.
• My current scores are as follow: Equifax (710), FICO (720), Transunion (740) and Equifax (649).

Thanks.

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[Anonymous]

Great details on scoring Marinevietvet. I highly appreciated.