Do type and number change your score?

[jdxprs1]

do the type and the number of collections change your score?

for instance, would your score change if you went from 4 collections down to 2?

also, does the score change based on whether the collections accounts are just medical, or a mixture of medical and utility bills?

[haulingthescoreup]

The things to be aware of are frequency, severity, and recency.

• Frequency: negatives on multiple accounts, and/or repeated negatives on the same account.
• Severity: a collection, paid or unpaid, is worse than a 90-day late is worse than a 30-day late.
• Recency: a two-year old collection is worse than a five-year-old collection. A brand new negative of any kind is devastating to scores.

So, you might be helped a little by reducing the number of tradelines with collections from four to two. (frequency)

Since they're all collections, they all count the same, so no change there. (severity)

Depending on when the collections occurred, you probably wouldn't get all that much impact with the removal of 5- and 7-year-old collections while one- and two-year-old collections remain. (recency)

As long as you still have one or more serious delinquency left --90 day late, collection, charge-off, etc --and/or a public record --bankruptcy, judgement, etc. --you're in one of the two negative scoring buckets, and there's only so far you can go with your scores. I think we've seen that you top out around 760 or so with a single serious delinquency and no judgment. When the last one comes off, from however long ago, that's when you see the big jump.

[jdxprs1]

what are the two negative scoring buckets?

[haulingthescoreup]

Well, scoring buckets are an attempt to combine consumers with similar credit histories into a category where their credit risk can be fairly measured. So for instance, someone with only two years' worth of credit history is gauged with others with short histories, instead of being lumped in with someone with 40 years of history. If they weren't broken out in this manner, the short history people wouldn't have a prayer of having decent scores when compared with the long-history people.

There are 12 (I think? maybe 10 buckets), mostly defined by length of credit history and similar neutral factors. But there are two negative score buckets. One is if you have a serious delinquency (60-day less than two years old; 90 day, 120 day, charge-off, collection of any age), and the other is if you have a judgment, with or without a serious delinq. I think that's the breakdown; something like that. Within these score buckets, you can do pretty well with your scores, if everything else is OK. We have a member here with a 120-day that's getting ready to drop off, and I think he's in the 760 - 780 range. But that's with everything else completely perfect, and until the major delinq falls off, that's as good as it's going to get.

So with collections, you'll stay in that negative bucket until the last one is gone, and that's if you don't also have charge-offs and the worse lates. But within that bucket, you can still get good scores, because compared to someone else with a collection AND high util and brand-new lates and all the other no-no's, you look pretty good. This is why people with some pretty awful old stuff on their reports can still buy a house or car or get good credit cards: they've shown that they are currently managing their credit well. Then when it does come off, if you've got everything else in good shape, you're going to see a good jump. With otherwise-spotless reports and long history, we've had reports of 50-point jumps when the last collection comes off.

There are actually some forgiving elements in the score formulas, and this is an example.