Effect of first collections (only negative account) on 760 FICO?

[jolott]

I have a new collections from a cell phone company (wrongly! of course) added to my credit report. My Fico is 760 and I have no other late payments on lots of accounts. My credit debt ratio is 80/20. How much might my score drop and how much will it recover bit by bit?

Thanks for the help,

jolott

[haulingthescoreup]

Welcome to the forums! Sorry it happened this way.

If it's a brand new collection, and you don't have any other serious negatives, I'm afraid you could be looking at a 75- to 100-point drop.

A new collection on a previously clean report is a killer. If you haven't already done so, go check out the Rebuilding Your Credit forum and learn about PFD (pay for delete), if you haven't already paid. If you have, learn about GW (goodwill.) But I think you haven't paid yet, so be sure to get familiar with PFD. You don't want this thing on your reports, or at any rate, you don't want it to stay there for long. Simply paying it won't get it off.

Just a thought --is this from an outside collection agency, or is it the cell phone company's in-house collections?

[jolott]

Success!  I spoke with Verizon's in-house recovery unit and they agreed to pull the collections back from their collections agency and to remove it from my credit report! I have the AUG# for the transaction.  Thank goodness we have another active Verizon Wireless account in good standing for 13 years to help show we wouldn't have tried to stiff them $100.

Thanks for the helpful answer (I don't know why I'm so paranoid about my credit rating) and all the other helpful discussion on this board.  I hope to keep reasearching/reading.

jolott

[haulingthescoreup]

Whew! That was great.

And it's not being paranoid to freak about a collection hitting clean reports. Although the initial 75-100 point hit would have started to recover over time, that thing would have been on your reports for seven years, affecting your scores and your credit profile throughout.