I believe the general consensus on that is - 3 months. I've heard that if you're within 3 months of your scheduled fall off date, it's safe to ask the CRA's for an early deletion.
It really is about who you get on the phone. The other day I called TU to get an item removed only TEN DAYS early. The guy wouldn't budge, he said it would drop off on the following date and that was that. I signed up for USAA credit monitoring that night, and got my first reports the next day. I noticed that the account in question was no longer on my TU report. I wasn't convinced though, so I called TU and pretended that I still thought the account was listed and asked to have it removed. At first I got the same line about how it will drop off on its own. After awhile the guy caved and said he would remove it. What I don't know is did it really get removed the day before, and he was just being difficult, or did it still show as listed and he truly removed it? No clue.
With Experian it was another story altogether. I called them up and asked to get this same account removed and the woman I spoke with couldn't be more helpful. No hesitation whatsoever, request granted and item immediately removed. She said it would be a day or two before it updated, I got an email later that night stating it had been removed. She told me they (Experian) prefer to remove items early, and that you can usually call within three months of the drop off date and it shouldn't be an issue.
My Experian report has zero errors, my Equifax has many errors. After speaking with multiple reps from each bureau it comes as no surprise that most of my issues are with Equifax (two with TU as well). They don't seem to pay attention to what you're saying, they seem extremely stubborn and even arrogant. I asked the initial rep I got on the phone with the other day what my expected drop off date was, his response was "well, it was added around this time, so uhh I guess it could be like uhhhh maybe sometime in like June". He sounded like he just walked in off the street, had about 5 minutes of training and took the call. Equifax is also the agency that told me that every time your collection account is transferred/sold to a new company, the seven year clock on deletion resets because it's considered a new account. Ridiculous. I'm at the point where I don't even trust the people I've spoken with from there to even have access to my information. Every one of them seems very shady, untrustworthy, and ignorant to their own policies.
