I am planning on offering a settlement to a CA. They state that they will list the item as "Paid" with the CRA. In considering credit scores - which is better - to list an item as paid or to delete it completely? I need to contact them soon with my decision. They did verify/validate the debt will all the requirements of the validation request.
paid as agreed or a paid collection? if its paid as agreed, get that in writing, if its a paid collection, don't pay it, get it deleted.
The lady at experian said paid is better than paid as agreed. Make sure it does not say something like paid settlement or paid collection.
A paid collection account or charge off, is just as damaging to your score as an unpaid one. Get them to delete it or mark as paid/never late if you can (a much harder update). Most mortgage companies will NOT give you a loan if you have ANY unpaid c/o's so that is the biggest reason to have one updated to paid (unless you want to pay them for moral reasons I guess), your score will not improve from the "paid" notation...go for delete. -Peace, Dave
If the lady at experian said that, she is lying to you. You do not want it to say only "paid". As others have said, you want it to say "paid as agreed" . If not, then you want it deleted.
Settled is a negative term. Paid is a neutral term, it will show up in the positive section of your report (as opposed to settled which shows in negative section) however it's still not 'as positive' as paid as agreed. It's better to have paid than settled, however, it's best to have paid/never late or paid as agreed.
Well I will say one thing for her. Usually you have to dispute and it takes 30 days then half the time they verify a buncha crap. I told her the cc company agreed to change it to paid(lying through my teeth) thinking she would do a reinvestigation. Instead, she told me ok, I will just change it to paid now. The next morning my score jumped 40 points. Now how rare is that for them to change something as drastic as that on a consumers word. Now that I think about it, maybe I should pressed for more heh.
