What date is used to determine when a collection falls off?

[f1maxis]

Does anyone know what date Equifax uses to determine when a paid collection falls off the report? 

On a collection, there are 3 dates listed:

Date Assigned

Date Reported

Date Last Active

All three dates could be different and in different years.

Also, is it correct that any paid collection should automatically fall off after 7 years?  If so, 7 years after which of the above dates?

[Anonymous]

By law, the CRAs are not allowed to include collections on your credit report that date 7.5 years after the "date of first delinquency" (although most of the CRAs drop them after 7 years). 

The DOFD is none of the dates you listed. It's the first month that you missed your payment on the account that caused it to go into collection.  If you pay, and then don't pay, you keep restarting the clock.  For example, if you pay the July bill, August bill, miss September, pay October, miss Novmeber, and never pay again and the account goes into collections... then November is your DOFD. The best thing to do is check all 3 credit reports to figure out your DOFD.

[f1maxis]

The credit reports don't list the date of first delinquency, they only list the dates I listed above.

With just this information, how do the credit bureau's know when to take the paid collection off?

[Anonymous]

The law requires creditors to report to the CRAs what the DOFD was.  Unfortunately, the CRAs are not required to include this information in your CRs.  Pretty frustrating, huh?

I saw an EX report recently that specifically included the DOFD.  For TU, if it happened in the last 2 years you would see it in the 24-month payment history (OK OK OK 30 60 90 ...  it's when "30" happened, provided you never were "OK" again).  EQ lists balance history for 2 years also. 

Sometimes you have to ask yourself, "self, when did my life start to mess up?" and then you remember what month/year everything started getting unravelled and you couldn't pay the bill.

The Date of Last Activity may be the the last date you made a payment, and so the DOFD would be the next month.  However, some of those scummy CAs reage the account to make the DOLA the date they got the account assigned to them.  The DOFD never has anything to do with the timing of when an account went to collection or what the collector did. 

[Tuscani]

You could also call the CRA and get the DOFD.