For collection accounts, you have two important dates.
The date of first delinquency (DOFD) on the OC account controls how long the CA can remain in your CR, which is 7 years plus 180-days from the DOFD.
There are several ways to get the DOFD. The best way is to go back to your OC accunt records, and find the first date of delinquency in the most recent chain of delinquencies that preceded closure of the account. This will usualy the 30-day late in the last chain of delinquencies. If you dont have the actual OC account records, you can look at the payment history profile on the OC account, and find the 30-day late in the last chain of delinquencies. Absent either of these, you can file a request with the CRA under FCRA 609(a)(1) for that date. Such a request requires a fee of $10.50, pursuant to FCRA 612(f). The date you would request is the date reported to the CRA under FCRA 623(a)(5)(A), which requires the creditor to, within 90-days of referring a debt for collection, to provide that date to the CRA.
The second date of importance is the date of referral to the debt collector. That is the date of opening of the CA. While the exact details of the FICO scoring algorithm are not known, many have expressed the opinion that the weight afforded to a CA in credit scoring depends on that date, up to the time of its final removal a 7 years plus 180 days from the DOFD. There are no statutory or regulatory controls on credt scoring. All you can do is to rely on the experiences of others.
