Collection Agency-Medical Provider

[Anonymous]

I asked a question on a prior occasion about a collection agency and received two great responses. Therefore, I'll try it again.

Question: If a collection agency reported a debt to the credit bureaus and it appears on my credit report, can I have it removed by paying the medical provider? In other words, if I pay the debt to the original medical provider and obtain a receipt, can I force the collection agency to remove the item from my credit report?

[Anonymous]

It depends. Sometimes the OC will just forward the pmt to the CA. Other times, they will take the $$ and then the CA will have no supporting data.

You can always ask the OC if they will agree to have the CA delete the account if you PIF. Just make sure you get it in writing

I just did this successfully, I think on Friday? Had 5 acc'ts totaling about $1300 for old med collections, spoke to the supervisor in the OC billing department and he agreed to PFD.

For a few others where the CA wouldn't PFD, I PIF'd anyway just to get them reporting paid on my CR (this is not the best COA for everyone, depends on what your immediate future plans are) and then wrote GW letters to get them deleted. Three of those are now being deleted after PIF since the OC got the letters & agreed.