The credit reporting agencies have a common policy, as stated several times in their common credit reporting manual and incorporated into their credit reporting agreements, that creditors and debt collectors are NOT to delete their reporting based on payment of the debt.
The CRAs have implemented that policy in order to preserve the completeness of credit report information they sell, and thus their value to their clients.
There is no basis under either the FCRA or FDCPA for requiring deletion of a reported collection based on payment of the debt, regardless of who the payment is made to.
Any deletion after payment of a debt is voluntary on the part of the debt collector.
They might choose to delete if you have paid the OC directly, but are not required to do so, and have agreed under CRA policy not to do so.
There is separate CRA policy that instructs debt collectors to delete their reported collection if their collection authority is terminated with the debt remaining upaid. That policy is intended to prevent multiple collections being concurrently reported on the same debt, and does NOT apply to deletion of their reporting if payment is made to the OC while the debt collector still has active collection authority.
The creditor must terminate their assignment of collection authority PRIOR to receiving payment from the consumer in order to require deletion of the collection by the debt collector.
If you have already paid the creditor, they cannot thereafter retroactively revoke their assignment of collection authority. It is thus too late, if you pay the creditor while the debt collector still had collection authority, to require deletion of the collection. You must obtain a voluntary good-will deletion from the reporting debt collector.
