My wife had some medical debts go into collections and they've been reported to the bureaus. We have the money to settle these debts but I want to figure how to communicate with the debt collector to convince them to delete the derogs from my wife's CRs in exchange for full payment.
Ok, understand this first about PFD. It's a super gray area in the credit reporting world. It's willfully removing accurate info from a person's credit file which is pretty clearly a direct violation of the FCRA. As such, many many CAs who will in fact PFD will NOT give you a written guarantee of this. If they do give you a written promise to PFD, you pay them, and they don't PFD...the letter does you no good in a dispute. The CRAs hate PFDs. They look at it as akin to fraud. So, you dispute and send in your letter that promises you a debt collector will commit 'fraud' in exchange for your payment, and the CRAs will refuse to delete the tradeline anyway.
That said, there are good options to get medical collections removed. If you're good with paying the full amount of the bill, call the original doctor/hospital/medical provider and ask them to recall the debt from collections in exchange for your payment. This will remove the collections account completely if they agree. If not, call the CA, and offer your payment in exchange for PFD. Many medical collectors do PFD anyway once you pay the debt. Of course there are some who just won't do it for the reasons I mentioned above. If a CA tells you they will PFD, you really just have to take their word. They're not likely to give you written acknowledgement of their intent to PFD, and it won't help you in a dispute anyway. Your ultimate goal is to have as many of the collections removed as possible, and any that remain reporting a $0 balance and paid, so they can begin to die their slow death aging, and sometimes...after you pay a CA who refuses to PFD...you can wait a few months and file a dispute. If the CA doesn't take the time to respond to the CRAs to validate a paid collection...it's gone.
Being medical you have more options to have it disappear
1. Call the OC and see if insurance can be billed, (or-rebilled), collections ultimately paid by insurance get removed per new rules that came from CRAs settlement with 22 state AGs. If not then
2. see if you qualify for Charity Care, if not then
3. ask that they recall the collection in exchange for full payment
4. Send the reporting CA a PFD offer
5. Google the HIPAA Process and contact its creator for help, this process cannot be discussed in any forum of myFico.
http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Rebuilding-Your-Credit/PFD-Q-amp-A-Examples-and-PFD-Success-Stories/...
http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Rebuilding-Your-Credit/PFD-Example-Letter/td-p/4519
