How to Negotiate With a Collection Agency to Remove Collection From Your Credit Report

If you have a collection account on your credit report and would like it removed. Here is how you do this.

Is the collection debt is NOT paid off? This is actually good because now you have leverage with the agency/creditor. First, negotiate with the collector that you are willing to pay the debt, if they will remove the negative items from your credit report. Here are few things to remember when negotiating.

1) Don’t let me them bully you around. You are in the driver seat because you have the money.
2) Offer something much lower than the debt amount they are trying to collect on. Even as low as 50%. Often times the debt has outrageous fees and interest tacked onto it. Also, the agency ‘bought’ this debt from the creditor at pennies on the dollar so any debt they collect is good for them.
3) Don’t give up until you have an agreement that you are satisfied with.
Once, this is verbally agreed upon, write out a check in the agreed amount and then write a letter to this affect;

Dear XXXX,

This letter is in regards to our recent conversation (blah, blah, blah). Enclosed is a check (check # XXXX) in the amount of $XXX.XX. By cashing this check, [name of creditor/collection agency] agrees to settle all outstanding debts against [your name here] and considers all collections paid in full. In addition, [name of creditor/collection agency] will remove the ‘collection’ account from [your name here]’s [name of credit bureau] credit report.

Regards,
[your name here]

I have rarely seen this not work. Sometimes I even send in a letter like this without having a conversation with Collection Agency. It’s so tempting to the agency to have that money that they take it (I’ve only had one ever reject it).

Is the collection debt already paid off? This becomes a little trickier. At this point, the best strategy is to keep bothering the creditor, credit bureau, and collection agency to remove the collection account until they take it off.

Write letters to the creditor and collection agency explaining that the debt has been paid and request that they remove the collection item from your credit report. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, again.

Write letters the creditor bureau asking them to verify the collection account with the creditor. Through the FRCA (Fair Credit Reporting Act), the bureau has a 30 day statute of limitations to verify this information, if not, they are obligated to remove the item from the credit report. Again, if at first you don’t succeed, try, try, again.

There are credit restoration services that are very effective at this ‘letter writing’. Lexington Law Firm is the biggest credit restoration firm touting millions of deletions (free consultation number; 800-223-7615). This makes sense if you have numerous items with multiple credit bureaus. Good Luck.