Collection Account advice

[Anonymous]

I had an old collection account from 2000, that I paid in full, however the info sat on my CR for 7 years, it is about to fall off, but I knew it always had a negative effect. .I just pulled all three CR's and found a distant education account sittting out there. My question is should I just ignore.  Does anyone know the point difference for collection paid in full or completely removed?  Has anyone ever heard of a Collection agency removing after PIF? 

Thanks

[Tuscani]

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ficohelp wrote:

I had an old collection account from 2000, that I paid in full, however the info sat on my CR for 7 years, it is about to fall off, but I knew it always had a negative effect. .I just pulled all three CR's and found a distant education account sittting out there. My question is should I just ignore.  Does anyone know the point difference for collection paid in full or completely removed?  Has anyone ever heard of a Collection agency removing after PIF? 

Thanks

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Removed is ALWAYS better. Paid collections do little for your score.. and can in fact bring your score down. And yes, a GW letter can be used for a paid collection.

[Anonymous]

Unfortunately, they're not supposed to remove after payment (per the industry reporting guidelines known as Metro2).

Sometimes they will.

Good luck.

[Tuscani]

More info as I am sure people will want to know about Metro2.

http://www.cdiaonline.org/Metro2/content.cfm?ItemNumber=853&pnItemNumber=506

1. The FCRA compliance date (e.g., the date which must be provided to the CRAs for just this purpose) is initially blank.
2. If the account becomes delinquent, the date gets filled in with the date on which the account became delinquent.
3. If the account remains delinquent, the date is not changed. Once filled in, it stays the same. It always shows the START of the chain of delinquencies.
4. If the account becomes current, the date is blanked out, and we go back to step #2. This requires that ALL past due money be paid. Continued payment that does not bring the account CURRENT does NOT reset the date.

For chargeoffs and writeoffs, the falloff date is 7 years plus 180 days after this reported "date of first delinquency in the chain of delinquencies that led to the final default". 

The date is transferred with the account if the account is sold to a subsequent creditor. So a CA cannot reset the date, he must use the date provided by the OC who sold it to him.

This is spelled out quite clearly, with several pages of examples to drill the point in, in the Metro2 format standards that tell the creditors how to fill out the data formats that they use when providing information to the CRAs.