If you are unable to repay a debt, the creditor who initially extended the loan to you may sell the balance of the debt to a debt collector or collection agency. Your credit score will suffer as a result of negative information that is often shared with the three main credit bureaus when your debt is turned over to a collection agency. After a specific time has passed, a collection account must be removed from your credit report. There are a few things you can do to attempt to have it removed from your credit report. These are things you may do if you believe it is an error or if you want to get rid of it as quickly as possible. The following is a list of the actions that you need to complete to have collection accounts removed from your credit report.

How Do You Get A Collection Off Your Credit Report?

Let's start with what's real. If you have a confirmed collection account on your credit report, it's unlikely that you'll be able to get it taken off before it's been there for seven years, which is the maximum allowed time. Most of the time, the only way to get a collection account taken off your credit report is to dispute it. But if the collection is legal, likely, it won't be taken off until the law says so, even if it's been paid. Still, there are a few things you can try to speed up the process of getting rid of it. But you should know they probably won't work:

• Check your credit reports to see which one has the wrong thing.
• Check the account to see if it's real. If it's not, you might be able to get it taken off your credit report.
• Pick what you want to do. You can dispute the account if it's wrong, ask the collection agency for a goodwill adjustment if you've already paid the bill in full, or wait for it to fall off your credit report on its own.

You should be aware that you might not be able to get rid of a legal collection.

Look Over All Of Your Credit Reports

Most of the time, you can get one free credit report per bureau per year from AnnualCreditReport.com. If you are worried about a collection account you saw on one of your credit reports, look at your other reports to see if bad information has been put on any of them.

Check To See If The Account Is Real

Is the account being used? Do you owe past-due money? If it is, you will have difficulty getting it off your credit report. But if the account is wrong or should have been taken off your report by now, you might be able to get it removed through the dispute process.

Choose what you will do

There are a few things you can do about a collection account on your credit report:

• If the account with the collector is wrong, you should dispute it with every credit bureau that has it on file. Online disputes are easy to file with the consumer credit bureaus. You can also talk to debt collectors and creditors about mistakes, but most of the time, you'll have to do this by phone or mail.
• Contact the collection agency and ask for a "goodwill deletion" if the account is real and has been paid. This is the same as paying for an account and then asking for it to be deleted. Even though it's probably not going to work, it's still worth a shot.

Just keep going. Even if you haven't paid the debt, a collection can stay on your credit report for up to seven years after it was marked as past due. But over time, it won't hurt your credit score as much.

How Long Will A Collection Account Remain On Your Credit Reports?

A collection account will stay on your credit report even after you pay it off or settle it. The Fair Credit Reporting Act says that even if a collection account has been paid, the credit bureaus can still report it for up to 7 years from the date the original account went into default. In other words, a collection account can stay on your credit report for up to seven years after the original debt was 180 days late, even if the account has no balance.

To Sum Up

Most of the time, there is only one way to get a collection account taken off your credit report early, before the date that the law says the credit bureaus have to do so. If the information about a collection account is wrong or out of date, you can dispute it with each credit bureau giving out the wrong information. The new scoring models aren't used as much as they could by lenders right now.