I have been working on rebuilding my credit and these boards have been so incredibly helpful, thank you!
I am happy to report that 7 of my collection accounts (ALL MEDICAL) were just deleted from my Transunion today! Still waiting on Equifax to report that they were removed.
I followed advice on these forums of writing a debt vaildation letter for the 7 accounts. They mailed me back within a week and said they were deleting 3 of the accounts due to their age (from 2013). Then a couple weeks later I received another letter from them validating the other 4 debts. Being impatient as I am, and reading some other success on here of getting them to PFD over the phone I decided to bite the bullet and just call them about the remaining 4 collection accounts.
I must say that these people at Stern Recovery Services were incredibly kind, courteous and helpful! I wish all collection companies were like them. Don't be scared to call them if you are trying to get a PFD. They said they remove all collections once paid!
I was prepared to pay in full for the deletions (about $2,500 UGH) but still asked them what was the lowest amount they would accept for the 4 accounts in order to get them deleted. they said they only had permission to accept full payment for 2 of the bills which was from one of the doctor offices, BUT, they could accept 70% from the other 2 bills that were from a different doctor office! I happily accepted the offer and paid them over the phone because I just wanted to get this behind me. This saved me about $600!!!!
Interesting, she told me that there were 2 additional bills that they had for me but that they were both under $100 and there policy is not to report anything under $100!
I asked how soon these 4 bills would be deleted and they said normally it takes 30-90 days but then they asked me if I had something like a home purchase coming up that I needed them off sooner. I said yes, that I am trying to refinance my mortgage and need them off asap. She said they would expedite it for me and they should come off in 24 hours. 2 days later, they have vanished (from Transunion) and my scored jumped 16 points! Hopefully they will be gone from Equifax in the next few days. They were never reported to Experian.
Now this just leaves me with 1 collection (MEDICAL) reporting to all three bureaus. That is with SCA Collections. They refused to do a PFD. But after reading these boards I saw someone that just had success a few weeks ago with them. They were also told they didn't do PFD but the person paid it then followed up with a goodwill letter in the mail and a goodwill email via their website form and they deleted it within a few days, so that's the apporach I am taking, so I paid them last week and immediately sent a GW letter via theur web form and am now keeping fingers crossed that they will remove my last baddie, otherwise I plan to contact them every week or 2 with GW letters 
I figure the worst case scenario is that they stay on my report but show as paid and although this doesn't help your FICO 8 score, it does help your FICO 9 score. And since Navy Federal and Wells Fargo both now use FICO 9, I do see benefit to having paid them in full.
I am hoping that once these are all gone from my 3 reports that I will see a big jump in my score and that I can finally make it to the 700 Club!
Good job, keep at it!
