Good day everyone!
A little background: I posted on here a few times about a year ago. I had been cavalier with my credit all through out the 2010s and up to about 2023, then due to an inheritance, I was able to pay off ALL my debt (outside of mortgage/car notes), and I got my act together and grew up and have been watching and managing my credit like a hawk.
I had been carefully gardening since 2023. I did open up a few new cards during 2024 to try to increase my credit limit...that helped, but also hurt because of the inquiries as well as reducing the AAoA to about 4.5. Learned my lesson! I've been good with keeping my utilization low (usually under 6%). One small personal loan under $1,000 just to help credit mix. I had run up two cards for a family Disney World vacation last month but paid them off in full this month and was waiting for the balances to clear to help boost my scores back up (they came down about 10-15 points due to spending A LOT on these cards in one month).
I have a few 30D baddies from May/June 2019 that are going to drop off next year, last derog was in summer 2022, and I have one "sticky" collection from CCS that was paid off in 2023 but sits there on my EX and EQ, and I'm just waiting for it to eventually drop off. All my FICO 8 scores as of yesterday were between 715-735.
All this to say...I woke up this morning, logged into my EX account, and discovered my FICO 8 had dropped to 670 from 715!! It is a collection from National Credit Adjusters for Klarna, and it was from May 2019! Yes, I remember it, and yes I let it go to collections at the time (summer 2019 was when I had a job loss, and that's why almost all of my remaining baddies are from that timeframe). I'm sure I requested a DV at the time, but it NEVER hit any of my reports at any point in the last 6 years, just literally right now. And I haven't received any recent written comms from NCA.
I logged onto NCA's website, and I can't even pay this! The "pay now" button was grayed out and a dialog box came up saying "this debt is too old to be sued for, but we can still report it to the extent allowed by law". It's for $1,350.
Is there anything I can do? I take some comfort knowing it can only be reported for another 14 months, but this is a big hit during my rebuild. Why would they start reporting it NOW if they won't even accept payment for it???
Welcome any thoughts. Thanks!!
