The stuff nightmares are made of - dying inside

[Anonymous]

After working for over a year to rebuild our credit after coming out of CCCS, my DH and I were preparing to apply for an FHA mortgage this month. Today, I updated my TU and EQ FICO scores and both were over the magical 640 midscore our preferred lender requires. TU is a 698 and EQ is 658. Whoohoo!

So then I get this idea to refresh my FAKO score from EX which showed 677 on Friday and find it has tanked to 631 TODAY. My stomach drops. What in the world?!?!?!?

So I view the report details to see what's happened and 1 of 2 old Medical collections has updated! Of course it has! Amsher Collections has updated a $250 medical collection from Oct. 2009 to a new LOWER balance of $245 with KD as of April 2012. I am literally about to vomit.

They (Amsher) have BOTH of the 2 collections listed on my report. Both have the same acct. number, both were reported in Oct. 2009 and both WERE $250. Now 1 of the 2 is updated to $245 as of TODAY.

I don't get it! Are they also going to update the other account? Are they going to report to all 3 bureaus? Because as of now, nothing on EQ or TU has changed. But if it does, we are going to be out of the game.

Obviously, I have the money to pay these but was told not to so now don't know what to do...besides cry. I've emailed the reports to my lender but she's at a closing today so don't know when I'll hear back. Someone, please talk me off the ledge!!!!

[MarineVietVet]

I'm sorry this is happening and all I can tell you is that an updated collection is not supposed to affect your score. Collections are scored off the date of assignment and nothing else. This all is subject of course to the CA's and CRA's doing their jobs and entering all the coding correctly.

But again this is for scoring purposes. I can't say how a lender might look at it.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the quick reply. This account is definitely the one that caused the drop, as I pull the report from EX daily and the score drop occurred today simultaneously with the updated information on the report. It's crazy how the balance dropped by $5 when no payment has been made - this is obviously a dirty collections tactic. It makes me angry because they've never, not once, contacted me about this account and neither did the medical provider. I have a large medical flex spending account at my disposal and had I known about this, it would have been paid originally. Sigh. Waiting on lender to get back in touch and breathing into a paper bag...

[MarineVietVet]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Thanks for the quick reply. This account is definitely the one that caused the drop, as I pull the report from EX daily and the score drop occurred today simultaneously with the updated information on the report. It's crazy how the balance dropped by $5 when no payment has been made - this is obviously a dirty collections tactic. It makes me angry because they've never, not once, contacted me about this account and neither did the medical provider. I have a large medical flex spending account at my disposal and had I known about this, it would have been paid originally. Sigh. Waiting on lender to get back in touch and breathing into a paper bag...

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I missed this the first time around. Since the "score" you get from the EX website is a "PLUS" score which is not used by any lenders it is useless. I would completely ignore this. As long as your EQ and TU scores don't change you should be fine.

[Anonymous]

Agreed, I only subscribe to Experian so i can see the details of my report with them. However, I don't know of they (Amsher) will also report to TU and EQ or if they already have and they are just slower to update. This account does appear on those reports so I am assuming I'm going to get dinged there, too. *Sigh*

[MarineVietVet]

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@Anonymous wrote:
Agreed, I only subscribe to Experian so i can see the details of my report with them. However, I don't know of they (Amsher) will also report to TU and EQ or if they already have and they are just slower to update. This account does appear on those reports so I am assuming I'm going to get dinged there, too. *Sigh*

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But remember that FAKO scores like the PLUS score will look at things differently than FICO does. Just because PLUS scoring dinged you for this collection update does not mean FICO will. Hopefully this will be the case.

Let us know if your FICO's change at all.

[Anonymous]

That is some hope to hold on to. Will I get a Score Watch alert if this changes my score?

[MarineVietVet]

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@Anonymous wrote:

That is some hope to hold on to. Will I get a Score Watch alert if this changes my score?

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I'll let someone else answer this. Trying to understand SW has always made my brain hurt. 

[Anonymous]

Seriously, thanks for all your help. I am feeling better, because now that I've gotten past the panic stage, I realize you are right. FICO looks at the DOFD, not the last reporting date...stupid FAKO really had me going!

[germaine47]

Amsher is very PFD freindly, they will send to the CRA immediately.