Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I have recently started checking into my credit score and I see some collections accounts I am going to start clearing.
I have read where some say have them validate and then settle. All the validation letters I see seem harsh. I do owe these. It was just a time in my life where things happened. I just want to start knocking them off my report.
2 of them, I could pay off their listed amount in a 3 weeks in one shot (at their amount listed owed). the last one I would have to do payments. From what I understand they do not have to but what would be the best way of getting them to removing (erase) these off the credit agency reports as they are payed.
P.S. I have contact phone numbers and addresses to the 3 Collection Agencies copied from Trans Union.
Now that it is on your credit report, you must negotiate.
I have done this before. Although I "owed" money I didn't actually owe, but it was luckily only a few hundred Dollars, so I just swallowed it.
What state you live in? In Texas, they only have 3 years to go after you. If the statue of limitation has run out, then do not pay unless you can get them to completely remove it from you credit report.
Quote:
You can ask the creditors to remove them, but nothing will compel them to do so.
I meant you can ask the creditors to remove the delinquencies after the debts are paid. Which I thought I made pretty clear in my post, but apparently not.
Don't send the letters until you learn the right term.
With some collection agencies (probably not all) the term "settle" is used to "cut a deal". IOW, if you owed $10,000, and called to tell them you would pay them only $8,000, that would be a settlement and once the $8K was paid, it would be posted as "settled in full".
"Paid in full" is when you pay the full $10K.
I am unsure how "settled in full" vs "paid in full" would affect your credit report. It seems like it would make a difference though.
I meant you can ask the creditors to remove the delinquencies after the debts are paid. Which I thought I made pretty clear in my post, but apparently not.
You didn't understand your post, I guess. Money is a compelling argument.
It does make a difference if you pay the whole balance or if you negotiate it down. I don't think, though, it will make a significant difference. I guess it depends on who much you owe and how much you can pay. If you can pay the whole amount and it is not much more than what they would take, it might be worth it. But I would try to negotiate even that.. tell them to report "paid in full" if they want the money. They often buy it at a huge discount. If you own 10, they might have bought it for 1 or 2 k. if they get a 7k from you, then that's still a big profit. And they want the money. So I don't think it's that unlikely that they will give in.
You didn't understand your post, I guess. Money is a compelling argument.
It does make a difference if you pay the whole balance or if you negotiate it down. I don't think, though, it will make a significant difference. I guess it depends on who much you owe and how much you can pay. If you can pay the whole amount and it is not much more than what they would take, it might be worth it. But I would try to negotiate even that.. tell them to report "paid in full" if they want the money. They often buy it at a huge discount. If you own 10, they might have bought it for 1 or 2 k. if they get a 7k from you, then that's still a big profit. And they want the money. So I don't think it's that unlikely that they will give in.
On something like a 10k original amount, the collection agency pays pennies on the dollar. Figure on less than $100 for a 10k debt purchased. Depending on how long the debt has been in collections, it has probably passed from one agency to another several times. Each time, that debt is sold for less and less and the closer it get to the statue of limitations for collection by judgement, the less anyone is willing to pay for it.
Don't fool yourself into thinking that once a debt is paid (full or via settlement amount) that things are fixed, they are not. The original lender, be it a bank for credit cards or other, can refuse ever giving you credit again. Consider though, that often and usually most of the time, a credit card company will offer you another credit card after the statue of limitations for collection by judgement expires. Yes, the very same company that wrote off your debt and sent it to collection will offer you credit.
Sometimes, after the stature of limitations has expired, negotiating or paying off the debt hurts you more than letting it stand. You can explain unemployment or hardships but once you engage the collection agency after the statute of limitations expires, you are raising the dead so to speak. While it is noble to make good on old debts, you are no longer dealing with the company you owed money to, you are dealing with someone who took a risk and bought a debt written off and for which a financial benefit was realized by the original debt holder. When you pay that very old debt, you are paying twice. Once for the final pay off and again because in part, your taxes went to the original company in some measure to offset their debt write-off.
You hear about large companies writing down debt? They are effectively removing a taxable amount of their profits by writing off you debt to them. Does that mean you shouldn't pay debts? Of course not but lets also be completely up front about things, they reaped a financial reward in some way by writing down your debt. Does the write off equal your debt and lack of revenue? Probably not but they also aren't losing the full amount of your debt either.
Sometimes, and I stress "sometimes" the worst thing you can do for yourself is to deal on any level with a collection agency if the debt has gone past the stature of limitations for judgement. You have to be realistic about what is going on and what makes the best sense. Does sending that money to the collection agency do you or the economy any good or does putting that money to work make better sense? Think it through because the collection agency spun the wheel on a risk, paying pennies on the dollar and have no real interest in you or the debt, it is simple a numbers game and you need to take emotion out of it and see it the same way.
Do what is best for you, not for the collection agency. Once the original company wrote off the debt, they could care less if you ever pay it, they sold it after writing it off and taking the tax break for it.
You didn't understand your post, I guess. Money is a compelling argument.
It does make a difference if you pay the whole balance or if you negotiate it down. I don't think, though, it will make a significant difference. I guess it depends on who much you owe and how much you can pay. If you can pay the whole amount and it is not much more than what they would take, it might be worth it. But I would try to negotiate even that.. tell them to report "paid in full" if they want the money. They often buy it at a huge discount. If you own 10, they might have bought it for 1 or 2 k. if they get a 7k from you, then that's still a big profit. And they want the money. So I don't think it's that unlikely that they will give in.
I understand your point. My point is that even if they agree to take it off in exchange for payment, they aren't going to do so until they have received the payment. And once they have the payment they really don't have any motivation to go to the trouble of actually taking it off.
remember, we're talking about collection agencies here. It's probably about the most unscrupulous legal industry on the planet. Ethics isn't a part of their game plan. If it were, they wouldn't consider removing negative information in exchange for payment in the first place.
Location: 23.7 million to 162 million miles North of Venus
23,539 posts, read 12,509,523 times
Reputation: 10463
Quote:
Originally Posted by duster1979
I understand your point. My point is that even if they agree to take it off in exchange for payment, they aren't going to do so until they have received the payment. And once they have the payment they really don't have any motivation to go to the trouble of actually taking it off.
remember, we're talking about collection agencies here. It's probably about the most unscrupulous legal industry on the planet. Ethics isn't a part of their game plan. If it were, they wouldn't consider removing negative information in exchange for payment in the first place.
That's why a person needs to get it in writing and signed by a manager or someone higher up.
Do what is best for you, not for the collection agency. Once the original company wrote off the debt, they could care less if you ever pay it, they sold it after writing it off and taking the tax break for it.
Not always true. Often times the creditor assigns the debt to the collections agency rather than sells it outright. The collection agency then gets a percentage of anything collected for its services of harassing you. Generally, the best way to go about it is contact the creditor (the original one, in case that's not clear) and see if you can negotiate something with them directly. That's part of the reason for the validation as you see who actually owns the debt.
If it's a really old debt, there's an oddity in the way scores are calculated. Say it's something that's five years old and you settle it however you do. You can actually end up hurting your score, at least temporarily, since a five-year-old open collection is actually not as bad as a recently 90+ day late entry that's settled/paid in full. For things like mortgages or what not where they really look at the credit report, it also means it's going to show up for much longer. So, yeah, there's that weird situation where you can actually be better off just letting it fall off your credit report in a year or two than settling it.
This makes me really wonder about learning the collections laws and going into collections as a business. Seems it could be quite profitable.
I think I'd call our agency "unethical collections".
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
