What To Do When A Collector Shows Up On Your Credit Report
What To Do When A Collector Shows Up On Your Credit Report
You get an alert from a credit monitoring service that Asset Acceptance or IC Systems or LVNV or some other debt collector or debt buyer is on your credit report now.
What do you do?
Take a look at your credit reports.
Is the information correct or false or do you not know?
If you know it is right — and I don’t know how you would know this — but if you know this new debt collector is 100% accurately reporting on your credit reports, then you can determine if you have the ability to pay this debt.
Now, about how you would know it is true.
Here are some simple questions:
- How do you know that LVNV or Asset Acceptance or Portfolio Recovery or whoever is showing up on your credit report really owns the debt?
- How do you know the debt collector was assigned the account?
- How do you know the amount is correct?
If the information is false, then you can either dispute it or sue.
If you don’t know, then the best thing to do is pick up the phone and call the collector or debt buyer.
So you call Midland or Portfolio or whoever and say “Hey, I just found out you put an account on my credit report. What is this account? Where did you get it from? Why is it on here? Will you send me proof of this so I know if this is correct or incorrect?”
You can read more about talking with debt collectors here.
If the collector treats you fairly, answers your questions, and sends you proof then that’s great.
You can resolve the case with the collector if you owe it.
But if the collector does not treat you right or lies to you or otherwise breaks the law (and you can find a detailed FAQ on the law here to give you a starting point) then you should consider suing the collector.
If people don’t stand up to these guys, the abusive debt collectors will be encouraged to abuse even more people.
Contact Us.
If you have any questions, give us a call at 1-205-879-2447.
Or fill out a contact form and we will get in touch with you as soon as we can.
I look forward to chatting with you.
Have a great day!