Two weeks ago, I got a notification from Experian, saying that my credit score dropped by 50 to 100, depending on the credit bureau. For perspective, this is a drop from 81x to 7xx, significant drop that will impact loan rates I can get. Credit score was referring to $115 not paid to the rental office we (me an my wife) are supposed to pay. We checked with them, we had 0 balance. Then, a few days later, I sent an email to rental office again. It turns out: I was the guarantor of a second rental there, for my wife's brother, for his two months stay between June-July 2021. And when he left, my beloved wife gave a random next address to the rental office, not knowing that the payments after leaving will be sent to this address. The rental office apparently sent both me and my wife's brother an email, and sent voice mails, around August 2021. And the mail about the payment was sent to this random address, not my address or my wife's brother's address. So, now, I see this $115 in debt collection, FCO, after 2.5 years later. I only saw the debt collection in October'2023, later last month. I called FCO multiple times, but I ended up paying the debt on friday. So, now, I have a mark in my credit report. For some debt I didn't even know about. Credit report says it will be there until April 2028 (7 years after whenever the wife's brother started staying there. Coincidentally, we were checking homes in October. And this comes at a very bad time. What do I do here to clean the mark in credit report? - I already paid the debt on friday, FCO will show 0 balance now. Will that increase credit score to an extent? - I want to ask for a goodwill deletion from credit report: https://www.credit.com/blog/removing-collection-accounts-from-your-credit-reports/ . How do I do this? FCO said that they don't do deletions? Should I go to the rental office, ask for courtesy removal, so they pull back their debt collection claim? How is this propagated to FCO? And what do I do with credit bureaus, will I call TransUnion / Experian / Equifax for this courtesy removal? - Does hiring a lawyer to remove the mark in credit report even help, or will the litigation leave another mark in credit report? I didn't even know he owed something to the rental office until late October. How do I resolve this and clean the mark in my credit report?
Are you looking at a possible mortgage? It doesn’t hurt to try and delete it but the justification must be well explained and at least you could either dispute it or try adding a consumer statement. Also, does it show as 30 or 60 days past due? If its 30, I really wouldn’t mind much..
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My credit was once impacted because I share first and last name with my brother. Our middle names are different. It was a $250 hospital bill. The best course of action was to pay the bill. I paid the and then disputed the delinquency with the three agencies. Once the bill is paid, collection agencies do not bother responding to disputes. A month later that delinquency went away (I also confirmed with the collection agency that they will not respond to my dispute if I have paid them). The $250 was not worth fighting.
Was there any benefit talking to the hospital for courtesy removal of the debt claim? I'm planning to talk to the rental office this week, for them to write a letter saying that this was a mistake, and I paid the debt, which i can use for the dispute for three credit bureaus / agencies. Also, what do you mean by "Once the bill is paid, collection agencies do not bother responding to disputes."? I already paid the bill, and if I dispute to agencies afterwards, will it always be accepted? My credit score is close to perfect, 810+, not sure if this will help with courtesy removal.
Well, couple of things. Hospital never asked my brother’s birthday. He is ten years younger than me. Initially I was mad and wanted to dispute with a threat of lawsuit that if it’s me, you should first bill my insurance. Obviously that would be insurance fraud. Second, hospital had already sold the debt to collection agency which sent it to credit reporting agencies and that’s how it landed on my report. I used to work at TransUnion back then. When I called TU and they learned that I work here, the customer service person politely suggested that I could fight and pursue a legal course, or it’s much easier to pay the collection agency and then file a dispute. She told me that she has never seen a collection agency respond when debts have been paid. That’s just paperwork on their part. After month of waiting on collection agencies, the delinquency goes away from credit report as if it was never there. The score comes back to where it was