@RobertEG wrote:
Lots of terminology flowing about, with different interpretations by different folks.
The legal designation is whether the debt is satisfied, meaning the creditor no longer asserts the debt.
What $ amount the creditor accepted as satisfaction of the debt, be it the full amount of the debt or less, is irrelevant to the issue of whether they have any remaining claim to debt.. That makes no sense at all. You yourself has said settled is the same as paid. Meaning no debt is owed. With or without the additional comment.
Then the subjective termonology arises.
Any debt that is satisfied is settled. However, current use of the term "settled" is often used to denote the debt was satisfied of less than the full amount.
So it depends upon how the reader interprets the term "settled" as distinguished from "paid in full."
From a credit reporting point of view, the status of a satisfied debt is reported as paid, requiring the current debt status to be updated to $0.
That reporting alone does not inform the reader of the CR the terms of payment between the creditor and consumer.
However, the creditor has the option to additionally report the terms of payment of the debt if they accepted less than the full amount of the debt as its satisfaction.
That is done by way of the provision of a special comments code of "paid for less" or "settled for less." If the consumer's credit report is reading paid for less on one but not on others, then the credtior made different reporting to those CRAs. I suppose they could argue that supplementing their reporting to one CRA by posting the terms of the satisfaction as having been for less than the full amount does make the absence of that reporting to another CRA inaccurate. That may be a tough nut to assert as a lack of accurate reporting, but it is clearly inconsistent.
When a creditor agrees to report "paid in full," that infers to the consumer that they wont report that additional special comment.
With the absence of reporting of that special comment, the consumer's credit report will then read the same as if the debt were paid in full.
My recommendation when a creditor offers to report paid in full is that one show modify that agreed terminology to read that the creditor agrees not to report any special comment of paid or settled for less.
