My fiance opened a credit card several years ago to build up some credit and added my name to it so I could use it as well. She never even told me about this and did it because she thought it would be nice if I could use it if needed. She used it for a while, monitored it with myFICO, but then canceled her subscription to myFICO when she paid off and quit using the card. She had paperless billing statements and quit receiving emails since there was no account activity. Fast forward to a few months ago and we're served papers saying that a collection agency is coming after us for $1800. We try to contact them repeatedly and they didn't return our phone calls until after 1 month. Then, they're super helpful (or so it seemed) and kept telling us to contact Capital One, but Capital One wouldn't talk to us because the account was already in collections. I assume someone stole her credit information, but we could not get Capital One to talk to us and the collection agency wouldn't tell us anything about the one charge that was never paid. Apparently we waited too long and legally assumed the debt. We're both students, have no money for lawyers, and work 30+ hours per week while going to school full time. A combination of procrastination and an ignorance of the law led to us paying the collection agency just to leave us alone. My credit score has dropped from mid 750s to 653. I checked my 3 free credit reports and apparently this huge blunder only shows up on Equifax. What do I need to do to get our credit back on track? I have a statement from the collection agency law firm stating that we paid our debt, but I'm not sure what to do with it. Do I simply fax this to equifax, they do the rest, and our credit starts to rebuild? All of my other credit over the past 11 years is excellent. I did sign up for the myFICO monitoring system. What else should I do? Thanks so much and I'm sorry in advance for the essay of a first post.
Unfortunately, since you've paid the collection agency, all anyone can do at this point is show that you have a paid collection. They can't take it off your report without some serious effort. You could find some errors in the reporting and dispute that, but most likely they'll just correct the error and leave it on your report as a paid collection. There are some big legal plays you might be able to make but they are a lot of work (and possibly money) and not a sure thing. I'd wait to see what others say, but, from what you've described, it sounds like all you can do is wait until 7 yrs have passed since the date the account went delinquent and then dispute them as obsolete if they don't disappear on their own. The good news (such as it is) is that these entries will have less and less impact over time.
