A settlement offer can include both terms of payment and credit reporting. It's a contract offer that can include any stipulations proivded they do not violate any provision of law.
You can offer to pay the full amount or pay less as full discharge of the debt.
You can also offer to settle under the additional condition that no reporting be made of the fact that they accepted less than the full amount of the debt.
Finally, you can offer to pay under the condition that they either delete existing reporting or agree not to report if they have not yet reported.
PFD or pay for not reporting offers can go to only one party. If both the OC and a debt collector have reported, you select who to send the offer to.
Since most consuners consider a collection to be more serious than reporting made by an OC, such as a charge-off or 90+ late, they will send the PFD offer to the debt collector.
In accepting in PFD, the party can only agree to deletion of their own reporting. A debt collector cannot, for example, also commit to deletion of any reporting made by the OC. You would, if the debt collector agrees to deletion, have to separately request the OC to delete by sending them a GW request.
If update to showing of $0 balance is your primary concern, such as update is required by statute regardless of the amount of the settlement, as long as it is clear that your payment is full satisfaction of the debt. The OC and any debt collector MUST, under FCRA 623(a)(2), promptly udpate the balance to $0
Settled for less is an additional, optinal reporting.
