Well I am desperately trying to find answers. I am in the process of buying my first home! I have been repairing my credit for over 2 yrs now and finally hit the magic number! Today, I was suppose to receive my pre-approval letter and then my world came crashing down. This morning I received an alert from MYFICO.com that my score had changed! I currently have zero balance on EVERYTHING on my credit bureau report. I have paid everything off! And there was a new collection account that was added to my report today for $900 for AT&T. It had been sold to a collection agency! AT&T had NOT been reporting to the bureau and I didn't know that this account was out there. Now, it's too late. The damage is done. I now have a collection account. I called the collection agency as soon as they opened and they had an address on file that I have not had in 2 years! I told them that I could prove that! I asked them if I could pay for delete and they said absolutely NO. Well I went ahead and paid the collection because I knew if there was any chance of my loan not falling apart that the collection had to be paid. The CA actually told me to dispute the acct! I told him I didn't feel that was ethical because it was my account and he told me it was. I know that I can't dispute because you can't have any disputes on my file! It has dropped my score 33 points and my lender told me today that I no longer qualify for the loan 
Since I paid the acct off, will this raise my score? Is there anything else that I can do?
Did you opt out? Collections always seem to pop up during mortgage applications. The CRAs send out the info to the CAs if someone is going for a mortgage and the CAs scout files for accounts. I'm sorry this happened. Make sure you opted out.
July 2013 score: EQ FICO 819, TU08 778, EX "806 lender pull 07/26/2013
Goal Score: All Scores 760+, Newest goal 800+
Take the myFICO Fitness Challenge
Current scores after adding $81K in CLs and 2 new cars since July 2013
EQ:809 TU 777 EX 790 Now it's just garden time!
June 2017 update: All scores over 820, just pure gardening now.
I would speak to a supervisor and get it dleted immediately get on it then go ask your mort person to do a rapid rescore day b4 your loan closes by the wasy you should leave a small balance on one of your cc less than 9% with all oithers reporting zero for the best best FICO score
Starting Score: 0Thanks everyone. I am absolutely heartbroken. I spent the majority of the day crying. Now, I have a few more questions, number 1 what does "opt out" mean? And secondly, I tried SO hard, got moved up to the 3rd level of managment and they insisted that they would not delete. Should I keep calling back? So in all honesty, this is going to KILL my score isn't it. Even though it is paid, there is no chance that my score is going to go up is there
What's the DOFD of the account? Let's look at that, see how old it is and if maybe we can find a little leverage in dealing with it.
www.optoutprescreen.com Go there and opt out!!!
July 2013 score: EQ FICO 819, TU08 778, EX "806 lender pull 07/26/2013
Goal Score: All Scores 760+, Newest goal 800+
Take the myFICO Fitness Challenge
Current scores after adding $81K in CLs and 2 new cars since July 2013
EQ:809 TU 777 EX 790 Now it's just garden time!
June 2017 update: All scores over 820, just pure gardening now.
it literally posted this morning! It is dated 2009. But this has not even shown on my acct at ALL! it's just not there! It just popped up as a collection this morning. I asked them this morning what address they had on file and it was an address where i lived 2 yrs ago. I told them that I could send proof of that. he absolutely said you and 3,000,000 other ppl want us to delete I am sorry it is our policy not to delete!
You need to tell them that u have rights as the consumer and that they never notified you of any collection with a dunning clearly because they have old address. I would try to contact the OC and see if u can explain the situation and make some headway. Explain u were unaware of the debt and that it was paid immediately upon your knowledge. See if you can get someone there to contact CA and get deleted
OP started a thread a day after this one. I locked this other thread because this one was moving forward.
So here's a link to the other thread, it may information to help the discussion here.
Thank you,LIGHTNIN, myFICO Moderator
PS.. I hope ya'll dont get confused on what I did, but I think ya'll are smart enough to understand.
Just trying to help out. (members of the myFICO family) the best I can.