Re-Aging by a collection company. Remedy?

[Anonymous]

"Enhanced Recovery" re-aged an old bad debt from 2012 to 2016. (It was a measly $250. But it was wrong, so I have refused to pay it) Who can I report them to? Who can make them stop doing this? How do I get this fixed?

[RobertEG]

What, exactly, do you assert was improperly "re-aged"?

Do you mean that they updated reporting to show that it remains unpaid, or did they change the reported DOFD?

[Anonymous]

The Experian report shows a 2016 date labelled "Date assigned". The expalnation for the label is: " ... the date the original account was first assigned to the collection agency by the original lender." The date of first delinquency was 2012. But no 2012 date is shown. Do the credit reporting agencies have the correct 2012 date of first delinquency somewhere? Will they use that date to let this invalid delinquency finally expire? Or will they use the 2016 date? A date when nothing happened to this account except it had its 4th birthday.

[RobertEG]

Thje credit report exclusion date of a collection is based ONLY on the reported DOFD.

No other date, such as date opened, date of collection, date reported, etc., is relevant.

Debt collectors are required to separately and explicitly report the DOFD to the CRA no later than 90 days after having reported their collection.

The reported DOFD must include the month and year of the first delinquency.

If not shown on your commercial credit report, check annualcreditreport.com or order directly from the CRA.

That date is stored by the CRA under a separate code called the "FCRA Compliance Date/Date of First Delinquency."

The CRA monitors that date, and must exclude no later than 7 years plus 180 days from the DOFD.

Improper reaging refers only to the reporting of in inaccurate DOFD in order to extend the credit report inclusion period of their collection.

Updated reporting that shows the collection remains open and unpaid is perfectly proper reporting, even though it affects scoring.