Let me setup the high level details: new $117 collection for emergency room visit, apparently insurance paid all except this amount. This past Tuesday (9/10) I get an alert from Experian monitoring that shows the collection and a 40 point drop in FICO 8 score.
CA is Commonwealth Financial, I call the number listed in the record from Experian, I get PFD agreement from CA and paid it over the phone. CA sends me two emails with attached pdf docs with the following descriptions: first doc says as long as funds clear CA will send delete to CRA’s and shows balance as $117 (received @ 9:15am); second doc says debt has been satisfied and shows balance as $0 and they will send delete to CRA’s asap (received @ 6:15pm).
At that point, I only have collection showing on Experian.
Between the two emails, basically after I hung up with CA, I login to my Experian account and submit a dispute for this collection where I say this in the details: “This collection has been paid in full and needs to be deleted from my credit profile data immediately, the 40 point score drop needs to be restored in full immediately.” I have no idea if a human actually reads the dispute description that you can add, so I don’t know if this actually helps with the dispute. I did not submit any supporting documentation because I did not find a way to do that on the Experian website.
The next morning (9/11), Experian had resolved the dispute and restored the full 40 point drop! Less than 24 hours from alert/score drop to score fully restored, wouldn’t believe this if it didn’t happen to me.
Then....
Equifax shows the collection on 9/11 with a 12 point drop in FICO 8 score , I immediately dispute the collection on Equifax website, use the same language as with Experian dispute, but this time I can upload the two supporting letters CA sent me in email. As of today Equifax shows dispute status as pending.
Then....
Today alert for TransUnion shows the collection with a 56 point drop in FICO 8 score. I try to open dispute from the TU website, but I get some type of error when I tried to submit it. So, I call TU, get their offshore rep first and they tell me they see no collection in my profile data, so I ask to escalate and they route me to US based rep (didn’t know that would happen, much easier to deal with), US rep says they see the “new collection account” and that they will open the dispute for me, I asked if I can provide supporting docs and they said no need and that this should be resolved no later than Monday, we’ll see.
Couple of observations: Amazed at Experian turnaround time and ease of opening dispute via their website (I have Experian 3B monitoring account), Why the huge descrepancy in point drops across the 3 CRA’s (I get profile data is not “identical”, but my data across the 3 is pretty consistent, would thing % drop would be in same ballpark), I assume my scores on EQ and TU will be fully restored as on Experian, especially since no other event has occurred that impacts my credit profiles.
Sorry for the verbose description, but thought this might provide some valuable insights for others. Also, I had no knowledge of this collection, we moved shortly after hospital visit, no mail, emails or phone calls, if I got a bill it went to the wrong address.
