Last July Cavalry sued me for an old Citi collections account. (It was only $1,200, too. 
) They won by default because I was staying with family out of state at the time. Weirdly though, the judgment has yet to appear on any of my credit reports. It still just appears as a collections. I'm curious how bad a judgment will be on my score. It's my assumption that it looks much worse on a manual review but I'm curious if it has any scoring effect?
Good to know!
The law firm with whom they worked hard pulled my credit three times in the two months following the judgment and I haven't seen any hard pulls since. (I should probably pull my free annual report to see if they've soft pulled me since.)
Is it normal for them to just hold on to the judgment and not report it for ~9 months? Should I contact them about making a payment plan or would it be better to save money and pay them in a lump sum? (Saving enough money would take me a few months and I'm afraid they'll see my credit slowly improve in the meantime as I make payments on my new cards.) I want to take whichever approach leads to them being less likely to report the judgment but I'm afraid I will wake the sleeping bear either way...
Thank you for your help RobertEG!
Interesting NJHandygirl! Did you pay them off via payment plan or lump sum? Were they easy to work with? Thank you!!
@Anonymouswrote:They also checked my credit several times--they do that to make sure you are not getting any other money, I believe.
They sued me, and before a judgment was issued, I made payment arrangements with them. They dismissed the suit without prejudice. I fell behind on the payments and they reinstated the suit and garnished my bank account. I got on another payment plan with them, paid in full and they filed a "satisfied judgment". During all of this time, it never appeared on my credit reports.
Hope this helps.
Nice! Looks like I'll be making payment arrangements with them soon...
