The date of first delinquency (DOFD) is a date-certain that does not change based on any later updated reporting of payment or delinquency status. It is the date of the initial delinquency in the current chain of account delinquency that occured with the original creditor account upon which the collection is being based. That specific date will not change for a given collection, and the debt collector is required to obtain that date from the original creditor and separately and explicitly report that DOFD to the CRA no later than 90 days after the debt collector initially reports their collection to the CRA. See FCRA 623(a)(5).
Exclusion of the collection must then be done by the CRA no later than 7 years plus 180 days from that reported DOFD. See FCRA 605(c).
A creditor or a debt collector, when making any reporting to a CRA on a delinquent account, must include the current status, which for a creditor will be the period since initial delinquency, such as 30-late, 60-late, etc., or simply as CO if also charged-off. As the period since initial delinquency increases with each subsequent updated reporting on a delinquent account, be it a creditor or collection, the negative scoring impact increases.
The date reported and the status date thus change with each updated reporting, lengthening the time since intial delinquency.
A collection that is updated and remains unpaid will continue to have and unpaid current status and status date for any subsequent updated date of reporting. However, a collection does not explicitly report the number of days since initial delinquency, such as 120-late, 150-late, etc. Rather, the period since initial delinquency is simply determined by the CRA (and by FICO for scoring purposes) by calculating the time between the previously reported DOFD and updated currrent and continued delinquency status. Thus, updated collections continue to notify that the debt remains unpaid, and thus negatively afftect scoring.
Starting Score: 494 503 521
