bigger impact--multiple collections or single judgment?

[valley_man0505]

I have a big couple of months coming up in regards to my Fico scores.  I have a CA that has agree to delete a bunch of medical collections if they are paid by the end of November.  The CA has 10 different accounts listed, and most of them are from within the last 2 years.  Obviously, deleting 10 collections should have a big positive score impact

However, I also just had a judgment filed agains me by NCO for an old CC CO.  This should be hitting my reports anytime now and will have a big negative impact on my scores

I am under the impression that a collection is a collection is a collection in Fico scoring regardless of the amount or if it is paid or unpaid.  So, since 10 collections will be deleted and only 1 judgment will be added, is there a chance that my score could still have a net increase once all this activity takes place?

[Junejer]

Doubtful for a couple of reasons. Only the most recent collection is being scored here. That's why you hear people complaining that their score didn't go up when removing a collection and they still have one on their reports. The other reason is that the judgment will be "fresh". The collections are a couple of years old.

[valley_man0505]

Let me get this straight--you are saying that only the most recent collection is scored?  So, only one out of the 10 collections is actually affecting my score?  That doesn't seem to make any sense.  FWIW, 5 of the collections were just added to my reports about 2 months ago and they caused a 40 point drop.  They were for medical bills from a year ago.

[Junejer]

That is exactly what I am saying. The most recent collection is the one that hurts the most, so that's the one that affects the score. Let's say you have those 10 collections and you get the most recent one removed. Now, the new most recent collection gets scored. If that one gets removed, then it goes to the next oldest and so on and so forth.

Regarding the 5 new collections--yeah that'll do it. But it wasn't like each of them caused a 8 point drop. It was the most recent one that caused a 40 point drop. So, since they are all the same age, presumably, if you got one removed you probably are not going to see any score increase.

Hope that I was able to be of some help clarifying this for you.

[fused]

The Byrd is right, so kudos.

[valley_man0505]

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@Junejer wrote:
That is exactly what I am saying. The most recent collection is the one that hurts the most, so that's the one that affects the score. Let's say you have those 10 collections and you get the most recent one removed. Now, the new most recent collection gets scored. If that one gets removed, then it goes to the next oldest and so on and so forth.

Regarding the 5 new collections--yeah that'll do it. But it wasn't like each of them caused a 8 point drop. It was the most recent one that caused a 40 point drop. So, since they are all the same age, presumably, if you got one removed you probably are not going to see any score increase.

Hope that I was able to be of some help clarifying this for you.

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ByrdMan--they are ALL going to be removed though.  I will only have one collection left after that, and it is quite a bit older than ALL the medical collections that will be deleted.

[Junejer]

Then, the score impact will be the difference between the damage the newest collection was causing and the damage of the older one. How old is the old collection?

[valley_man0505]

The oldest collection is almost 5 years old.

[Junejer]

With all that was said, I hesitate to attempt to give a guess at a point gain. To be safe, I would say 10-20 points. When that last one comes off, I would say a little more. These point gains also depends on what the remainder of your CR looks like. You will be rebucketed when that last one comes off. How do you compare with others in that new bucket? Do you have a long credit history? What's AAoA, etc.? These are rhetorical questions that you should consider.

Good job getting those baddies to go bye-bye.

[valley_man0505]

Well, the judgment finally hit my reports today.  According to SW, it only caused a 5 point drop, which really surprised me.  The med collections costed me MANY more points than that when they hit.  I am still waiting for my work bonus to get those med bills paid off and deleted.  Hopefully, that will come very soon.  It will be interesting to see what kind of gain I get when those are deleted.