I have a $900 debt on a CC that is 6 months old. I received a call from what I thought was the OC but it was a CA. I agreed to pay and made the first payment ... because I did owe the money. I didn't really know anything about CAs or any of this stuff. I asked them for a receipt after making this first payment of $200 and they said no. They said you have your statement from the CC ccompany. I have been told by friends-who also don't know much about this stuff-- I should contact them in writing to ask not only for a receipt but a statement of the original debt and the balance due after the first payment. So then, getting wiser by the minute, I decided to check my Credit History (CH? sorry I don't know all the abbreviations) with annualcreditreport. It shows the OC has reported it as CO and a past due balance is the equal to the debt. But there is no CA listing (tradeline?) showing that it is owed to them instead. I did see that three separate CAs made inquiries on my account - and two of them have called me about this. My question is: can I go back to the OC to pay the debt even though I have made a payment to the CA ( which I think I can stop). Is that better? Thank you.
You can try and go to the OC. Not all CAs actually report immediately. But, if the OC has sold/transferred the debt, they need to note that on your reports and -0- out the balance.
If it's internal or an assigned collections, I don't think the CA reports. I'm going through this with Cap 1 right now. They wrote it off and assigned it to their regular CA. I talk to the CA, but the payment goes straight to Cap 1 and the CA does not report as a separate entry, they confirmed this. It's going to update from charge off to paid/120 late or something like that. I'm going to ask if they will update to paid as agreed/120 + Late like Discover did with me a few years ago. I guess that's better than charge off/sold to a CA and then another CA showing up and then getting dinged twice for the same debt.
It's probably their own collections. An account that is assigned can still report, but of course no one is required to report.
