Discover card collections vs lates

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

I have a question about my discover card collections account from 2008. The account was paid a couple of months ago (marked as Paid in Full). The account current shows it as a paid collections and myFICO shows 2 30+ late, 2 60+ late, and 40 90+ late (most of these after it went to collections). It's one of my older accounts, and having it deleted would drop my AAOA to around 4.8 years (from 5.1). However, I'm not sure if trying to get them to remove the late payments would do any good. So, would it be better to try to get the account deleted, get late payments knocked off, or leave it alone? I've had some decent success with GW letters, so I suppose I'm just trying to determine the tactic I should take.

Additional info that may factor in:

1) I do have one other collections account (from 2008), which has less impact on my AAOA, but I paid in full for less than the total amount due, so I think the odds of getting it deleted are very slim.

2) I do have other accounts with late payments, so getting the Discover payments deleted wouldn't completely clear my history.

Thoughts?

[fused]

Who is reporting the lates and the collection, Discover, a CA, or both?

[Anonymous]

It looks like only Discover Card. Its difficult for me to discern, but it seems like Discover card retained the account, but hired a CA to collect for them without selling off the actual account.

[fused]

So, let me be sure I understand you. You do not see any third-party CA on any of your reports for this paid debt? Knowing this makes a huge difference in terms of what options are available to you.

[Anonymous]

Yes, exactly. I don't have any trade lines indicating that Discover sold the account to a CA. I have two other CAs on my credit report, one that I can track back to a Providian card, and one that was a PFD that's already cleared off from two of the three bureaus, so I don't see anything at all that would indicate a CA for Discover.

[fused]

Okay!  A couple more questions. Does your Discover account show it was charged-off, or do you only see lates? Is the account reporting as closed?

[Anonymous]

When I run the report via Experian, it doesn't show charged off on any bureau. However, referring to the combined report that I got from my loan officer, it shows it as charged off. In all cases, the account appears as closed. I suppose that's one of the things that's confusing to me is because 'charged off' implies that they don't have interest in the account anymore, but I don't see any CAs associated with it either, paid or otherwise.

I do have a great deal more faith in the report I got from my loan officer than the one I got from Experian, but it strikes me as unusual to say the account was charged off, then went to collections, but not to have any CA pick it up. Would an OC charge off an account and report it as such before sending it to their own collections department?

[fused]

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@Anonymous wrote:

When I run the report via Experian, it doesn't show charged off on any bureau. However, referring to the combined report that I got from my loan officer, it shows it as charged off. In all cases, the account appears as closed. I suppose that's one of the things that's confusing to me is because 'charged off' implies that they don't have interest in the account anymore, but I don't see any CAs associated with it either, paid or otherwise.

I do have a great deal more faith in the report I got from my loan officer than the one I got from Experian, but it strikes me as unusual to say the account was charged off, then went to collections, but not to have any CA pick it up. Would an OC charge off an account and report it as such before sending it to their own collections department? I'm not entirely sure!

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What does it say on your EQ and TU reports?

[Anonymous]

Through myFICO:

EQ says current status: Paid or paying as agreed

In Descriptions: Closed or paid account / zero balance, Account paid for less than full balance

In Worst Delinquency: Bad debt/collection

TU says current status: Charged off as bad debt

In Descriptions: Profit and loss writeoff

In Worst Delinquency: None Reported

So I suppose my TU report does show that it's charged off, though EQ and EX do not. Note that EQ and EX were both pulled today, but TU is about 3 weeks old. I can't imagine that it would have changed from write off to anything else, though, so I'm assuming the information is accurate?

[fused]

The only thing you can rely on with reports from myFICO are the scores. As for the facts on your credit reports, you have to pull your reports directly from the CRAs or at annual credit report. If we know what the "real" status of your Discover account is on all three reports, then we can come up with a game plan.