how to remove paid collections from credit report
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How can I get paid collections removed from a credit report? [2022]
Can a paid collections be removed from your credit reports? What are the steps for getting it removed? Click to find out!
Updated on April 26, 2022
Imagine that you couldn’t pay a debt, and now a debt collection company has been sent to collect money from you. This is horrible and stressful, but luckily you recently got a new job and can repay the debt. When you next check your credit report, you are shocked. The paid collection is still on your credit report, and it is ruining your credit score. Now you need to find out how to remove paid collections from a credit report.
A collection, paid or not, represents a seriously delinquent account. They will have a significant, negative impact on your credit score. Lenders don’t want to give money to someone that has a bad record of repaying their debts.
If you don’t want to wait seven years for the paid collection to drop off your credit report, you may be wondering how to remove paid collections from a credit report.
There are several strategies to remove erroneous collections from your credit report. If the paid collection was legitimate, you can consider asking your lender for a goodwill deletion of the collection from your credit report. If all else fails, you have to wait until the paid collection drops off your credit report. At that point, your credit score will recover.
Table of Contents
How Long Does a Collection Account Stay on a Credit Report?
The Fair Credit Reporting Act lays out that the collection has to stay on your credit report for up to seven years from the date of default on the original account. This is to give lenders a clear picture of your financial behavior so they know the risks of lending you money.
However, on a credit report, a paid collection can still stay on your credit report for up to seven years, regardless of whether the account has a $0 balance.
After seven years, the paid collection will automatically drop off your credit report.
Can Paid Collections Be Removed from a Credit Report?
If you don’t want to wait seven years for the paid collection to drop off your credit report, you may be wondering how to remove paid collections from a credit report.
When a debt is said to be “sent to collection” it means that the lender has given up on trying to get that money from you. Instead, they have employed a debt collections company to pursue the debt. This is bad for your credit report because it reflects badly on you as a debtor.
Accounts that get to the collection stage are considered seriously delinquent. It means that someone lent you money but you didn’t repay it even after they did everything in their power to get you to pay it back. They had to send a debt collections company to try to collect money from you. Lenders don’t want to give money to someone that has a bad record of repaying their debts. A collection will have a significant, negative impact on your credit score.
The problem is that, even if you then pay off this debt through the debt collection company, the collection still remains on your credit report. So even if you no longer owe the lender money, your credit score will still be negatively affected.
Luckily, there are some strategies you can employ to get paid collections removed from your credit report.
How to Remove a Paid Collections Account from Your Credit Report
If there has been an error, you can file a dispute and have a paid collection removed from your credit record. If the paid collection is legitimate, it can be very difficult to remove a legitimate collection from your credit report.
Credit Bureau Error
After seven years, the paid collection will automatically drop off your credit report. If it doesn’t, this means that the credit bureau has made an error. File a dispute with any credit bureau that still lists the debt. Make sure you have all your documentation in place to prove the original date of delinquency.
Debt Collector Error
If you think there is an error on the part of the debt collector, ask them to validate the debt to make sure it’s yours. If the collector can’t validate the debt, the collection should be removed from your credit report. Follow up to make sure.
Goodwill Deletion
A goodwill deletion is the only way to remove a legitimate paid collection from a credit report. This strategy involves you writing a letter to your lender. In the letter, you need to explain your circumstances and why you would like the record of the paid collection to be removed from your credit report. A lender will sometimes agree to a goodwill deletion if this is the first stain on your credit history.
Give It Time
If the collection was legitimate, it is unlikely that you will be able to remove it from your credit reports. In this case, you should still pay your collection. This shows future lenders that you take your debts seriously.
Then you simply have to wait for the account to be removed from your credit report in due time. A paid collection can only remain on your credit report for seven years. Its impact on your credit score will dissipate over time. Use the seven years to build good credit habits.
How Many Points Can My Credit Score Increase if a Collection Is Deleted?
Late payments, skipped payments, and collection accounts are all factored into your credit score. Accounts that get to the collection stage are considered seriously delinquent. They will have a significant, negative impact on your credit score.
There is no fixed number of points that a credit score can increase if a paid collection is removed from your credit report. Each individual’s credit score will be differently affected.
How to Remove Paid Collections from Your Credit Report
Create a credit cleanup plan and learn how to remove paid collections from your credit report with this handy guide.
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Home > Credit Reports > How to Remove Collection Accounts from Your Credit Reports
How to Remove Collection Accounts from Your Credit Reports
Published October 26, 2021 | 8 min. read
Gerri Detweiler
Gerri Detweiler focuses on helping people understand their credit... Read More
398 comments
Collection accounts can kill your credit. They’re unsightly, and they could reduce your credit score by tens—and sometimes hundreds—of points. What’s more, they can stay on your credit report for seven years, even if you pay them off. If you’re wondering how to remove paid collections from your credit report, you’re in the right place. Here’s the lowdown:
An Overview of Collection Account Removal
Create a Collections Account Removal Plan
How Many Points Can My Credit Score Increase if a Collection Is Deleted?
How Long Does It Take for a Paid Collection to Come Off Your Credit Report?
Collection Account Removal—The Bottom Line
An Overview of Collection Account Removal
Collection accounts are annoying—and there are two main ways to remove them. If your collection account listings are inaccurate, you can challenge them. If they’re accurate and you can’t get the lender to agree to a voluntary removal, you’ll have to wait for them to fall off by themselves—and that can take around seven years.
Create a Collection Account Removal Plan
Before we get into the nitty-gritty, we need to level with you. Collection accounts aren’t easy to remove. Before you proceed with an action plan, make sure your expectations are realistic. If a collection account on your credit report is accurate and you pay it off, it won’t just disappear. To remove an item completely, you’ll have to negotiate with the debt collection agency and ask for a goodwill removal.
If you have a lot of inaccurate collection accounts on your report, you might need help from a credit repair firm like Lexington Law. Credit repair companies know how to navigate credit bureau territory, and they frequently can help consumers understand how to handle trickier situations.
But if you’re committed to a DIY approach to collection removal, the following three steps can help you clear up your credit profile.
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1. Review Your Credit Report
Before you do anything else, get copies of your credit reports from all three credit bureaus—Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. Each credit bureau holds slightly different information about you, and if you plan to challenge unsubstantiated collection accounts, you’ll have to create disputes with each individual agency.
You’re entitled to one free copy of your credit report per bureau each year. To get your credit reports, head on over to AnnualCreditReport.com. You’ll be able to view all the information held on file about you at each agency—but you won’t see your credit scores. To see a quick credit snapshot and your Experian VantageScore 3.0 credit score, sign up for Credit.com’s free Credit Report Card, too.
Review all the items on your credit report to make sure they’re accurate. Do you recognize listed lenders? Does your account information seem accurate? Are all the items on your report familiar to you? If you fell behind with payments on an account, when did that happen? With all that information in hand, you’ll be ready to make the next move.
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2. Review Your Options
With a clear picture of your credit in hand, it’s time to review removal options. Let’s take a closer look at those two strategies we mentioned earlier—namely, challenging inaccurate items and asking for goodwill deletions.
Challenge Inaccurate Items
Credit bureaus aren’t allowed to report inaccurate or incomplete information. If any of the information you see on your credit report is inaccurate or incomplete, you have the right to challenge the accuracy of that item. When they receive challenges, credit bureaus have between 30 and 45 days to investigate and confirm—or correct—the information they hold on file about you.
If the collection or debt on your credit report isn’t yours, don’t pay it. Ask the credit bureau to remove it from your credit report using a dispute letter. If a collector keeps a debt on your credit report longer than seven years, you can challenge the debt and request it be removed. This is especially true if you have proof of the start of the delinquency.
Ask for Goodwill Deletions
If you have an excellent credit history, you may be able to get the original creditor or collection agency to remove the derogatory mark as a favor or act of “goodwill”. You’ll generally have to pay the collection account off first, though, if you haven’t already done so.
If you have an otherwise blemish-free credit history, go ahead and ask the financial institution for a goodwill deletion. Removal after payment might be against their rules—but goodwill deletions might not be and it never hurts to ask. You can find goodwill letter templates online to help you communicate with your lender.
How to Get a Collections Stain Off Your Credit Report
Collections on your credit reports are serious negative information that can do major damage to your credit scores. We offer steps to remove them.
How to Get a Collections Stain off Your Credit Report
Do your homework, dispute your account if it’s an error and ask for a goodwill deletion if you paid the collection.
Sean Pyles Mar 16, 2022
Many or all of the products featured here are from our partners who compensate us. This may influence which products we write about and where and how the product appears on a page. However, this does not influence our evaluations. Our opinions are our own. Here is a list of our partners and here's how we make money.
Collections accounts generally stick to your credit reports for seven years from the point the account first went delinquent.
But you may want them off sooner than that; unpaid collections can make you look bad to potential creditors. And while newer versions of FICO and VantageScore credit scores ignore paid collections, many lenders still use older formulas that count even paid collections against you.
Here are steps to remove a collections account from your credit report:
Do your homework
Dispute the account if there's an error
Ask for a goodwill deletion if you paid the collections
An unlikely option: Pay for delete
1. Do your homework
Get information on the debt from two places: your credit reports and your own records.
Until the end of 2022, you can get a free credit report every week from each of the three major credit bureaus by using AnnualCreditReport.com. In addition, you can check your free credit report at NerdWallet as often as you like, along with a free credit score, both from TransUnion.
Gather your own records for details on the account, including its age and your payment history.
Between the two, verify these details:
Account number
Account status (paid, charged off, closed)
The date the debt went delinquent and was never again brought up to date
Once you have the details straight, you can decide which approach works for you.
2. If a collection is on your report in error, dispute it
You may have a collections account on your credit report that shouldn’t be there. Maybe it’s too old to still be reported, or the collection itself is incorrect.
Too old to be reported: Delinquent accounts should fall off your credit report seven years after the date they first became and remained delinquent. But that doesn’t always happen. For debts that linger longer than they should, file a dispute with any credit bureau that still lists the debt.
If a credit bureau has made a mistake on your report — if you don’t recognize the account or a paid account shows as unpaid, for example — gather documentation supporting your case. Then, file a dispute by using the credit bureau's online process, by phone or by mail. The bureau has 30 days to respond.
Collection is incorrect: If you think the error is on the part of the debt collector, not the credit bureau, ask the collector to validate the debt to make sure it’s yours. Note that you have 30 days from the date the collector first contacted you to dispute the validity of the debt. If the collector can’t validate, the collection should come off your reports. Follow up to make sure.
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3. If you already paid the debt: Ask for a goodwill deletion
You can ask the current creditor — either the original creditor or a debt collector — for what’s called a “goodwill deletion.”
Write the collector a letter explaining your circumstances and why you would like the debt removed, such as if you’re about to apply for a mortgage. There’s no guarantee your request will be accepted, but there’s no harm in asking. A record of on-time payments since the debt was paid will help your case.
Your credit record will still show the late payments leading up to the collection action, but removing the collection itself takes away a source of score damage.
4. An unlikely option: Pay for delete
Under a pay for delete agreement, debt collectors take the collections account off your credit report in exchange for payment on the debt. The collections account will be deleted, but negative information about late payments to the original creditor will persist.
However, achieving a pay for delete is uncommon, potentially unethical and soon to be outdated. Since debt collectors must report accurate information to credit reporting agencies, deleting correct information falls into a gray area.
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About the author: Sean Pyles is a debt writer at NerdWallet whose work has appeared in The New York Times, USA Today and elsewhere. Read more
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