A debt in collections appears on your credit reports for seven years from the month of the first missed payment that triggered the collection effort. A collection account can damage your credit scores, but its impact will lessen over time.
A debt in collections remains on your credit reports for seven years from the month of the first missed payment that led to the collection process. A collection account can damage your credit scores as long as it appears on your reports, but its negative effect on your scores lessens over time.
It can be a shock to find a collection account on your credit report. This hurts your credit and makes it more likely that a debt collector will call you to get the money back. Debt collectors can look at your credit report without your permission as they try to get you to pay. But how often can debt collectors check your credit? Read on to find out.
When Debt Collectors Can Access Your Credit Report
The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) lets companies with a “permissible purpose” get your credit report even if you don’t know about it. The FCRA specifically identifies debt collection as a permissible purpose. That means that if you owe money and a collection agency wants to get it from you, they can look at your credit report.
There are no federal laws limiting how often a debt collector can pull your credit report. They are allowed to access it as frequently as they want. However, some state laws may impose limits on how often debt collectors can request your credit report. For example, New York prohibits debt collectors from pulling credit reports more than once every 90 days. So it’s a good idea to check if your state has any laws regulating the frequency of credit report pulls by collectors.
Why Debt Collectors Access Credit Reports
So why do debt collectors pull credit reports, and why might they do it frequently? There are several key reasons:
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To verify your contact information: Credit reports provide current and previous addresses, phone numbers, and other contact details. Debt collectors use this info to locate you and get in touch about the debt. If they can’t reach you initially, they may pull your report again to dig up new contact information.
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To get a sense of your overall financial situation, look at your credit report. It has information about your account balances, credit limits, payment history, and other things. Debt collectors look at this information to see if you can pay and to plan how to go about collecting the debt. They do multiple pulls to keep track of changes to your financial profile.
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To monitor account disputes: If you dispute a debt with the credit bureaus, the collector will pull your credit report to see if the dispute results in any changes to their tradeline. They may check several times during the dispute process.
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To review credit damage: Multiple collection accounts and inquiries can significantly hurt your credit. Collectors may pull your report periodically to assess the damage and determine if you may be motivated to pay off debts to start rebuilding credit.
Impact on Your Credit Score
Whenever a debt collector pulls your credit report it results in a hard inquiry on your credit file. Hard inquiries cause your credit score to drop by a few points initially. The impact of a single inquiry is minor, but can add up if the collector checks your report frequently.
Too many hard inquiries in a short period is seen as a sign of financial distress, as it suggests you are aggressively applying for new credit. This can make lenders view you as a higher credit risk. Generally, having fewer than 5 inquiries in a year avoids significant damage to your score. But if a collector is able to pull your report as often as they like, it could result in a large number of inquiries dragging down your credit.
Strategies to Limit Access to Your Credit Report
Here are some things you can do to keep debt collectors from seeing your credit report:
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Pay off the collection account: If you pay off the debt, the collection account will be closed and the collector will no longer have a permissible purpose to access your report. This removes their ability to continue checking your credit.
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Dispute erroneous inquiries: If you notice inquiries from a collector pulling your report excessively, you can dispute them with the credit bureaus if you don’t believe they are valid. Getting inquiries removed helps minimize damage to your score.
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Freeze your credit: Freezing your credit with the major bureaus blocks all access to your report unless you temporarily lift the freeze. This prevents collectors from being able to pull your credit while the freeze is active.
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Consult an attorney: If a collector is aggressively using hard inquiries to harass you, contact a consumer lawyer. They can review if the pulls violate consumer protection laws and advise you on appropriate action to stop the collector.
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File complaints: You can submit complaints about improper credit report access to regulators like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Federal Trade Commission. This creates a record of the collector’s activity and may prompt enforcement action against violations.
The Bottom Line
While frequent credit report pulls from an aggressive collector can be alarming, being aware of your rights under the law and taking action to dispute erroneous inquiries can help guard against excessive damage to your credit. Don’t hesitate to reach out to consumer advocates and legal resources if you need help dealing with a collector who oversteps boundaries. With some diligence in monitoring your credit file, you can detect and try to limit unwarranted access.
How to Dispute a Collection on Your Credit Report
You have the right to dispute any inaccurate information that appears on your credit reports, and that includes collection accounts on debts that may have been misattributed to you or that result from fraud. If you see a collection account on your credit report and dont recognize the debt associated with it, you have the right to do the following.
- Contact the debt collector. If you believe that the collection account was reported in error, start by contacting the collector to let them know your concerns.
- Request written verification of the debt. If you send a written debt verification request to the collector within 30 days of receiving the initial debt validation letter, the collector must verify the debt with your original creditor and pause collection attempts until they get a response. This could give you time to gather proof that the debt is not yours.
- As appropriate, alert law enforcement. If the collection is legitimate (perhaps its for a service you used that was billed using a name you didnt recognize), it cannot be removed from your credit report. But if you believe the unpaid debt was fraudulently obtained in your name, notify the collection agent, the original creditor and appropriate law enforcement. The Federal Trade Commissions IdentyTheft.gov website is a good place to begin.
- Contact the credit reporting bureaus. You have the right to dispute inaccurate collection accounts on your credit reports. You will need to file disputes with each credit bureau separately.
Learn more: How to Dispute Credit Report Information
How Collections Impact Your Credit
Late payments and collection accounts could hurt your credit scores as long as they appear on your credit report. Their exact impact can depend on what else is in your credit report, the nature and amount of a given collection account, and whether or not you pay the collector the amount they seek.
Heres an overview of how collections impact commonly used VantageScore® credit scores and FICO® ScoresÎ.
| VantageScore 3.0 and 4.0 | FICO® Score 8, 9 and 10 |
|---|---|
| Ignores all paid collections | Ignores all paid collections |
| Ignores unpaid collections under $250 | Ignores unpaid collections under $100 |
| Ignores any medical debt included in your credit reports | Ignores medical collections that are under $500 and that are paid or less than one year old |
Heres more detail on how each type of collection impacts your credit scores:
- Paid collections: Under some circumstances, paying a debt collector what you owe them can eliminate a collections negative impact on your credit. Recent versions of VantageScore and FICO® Score credit scoring models ignore paid collection accounts, but many lenders may still be using older versions of those systems that dont ignore paid collections.
- Small collections: The latest versions of the FICO® ScoreâFICO® Scores 8, 9 and 10âignore collections for debts of less than $100, whether theyre paid or unpaid, while the latest versions of the VantageScore credit scoreâVantageScore 3.0 and VantageScore 4.0âignore collections for less than $250, whether theyre paid or unpaid.
- Medical collections under $500: If paid or less than one year old, medical collections for less than $500 are excluded from your credit reports and do not affect your credit scores. A rule change by the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) would have removed all medical bills from credit reports in March 2025, but implementation has been delayed. Versions 3.0 and 4.0 of the VantageScore credit scoring system ignore any medical debt included in your credit reports.
Tip: “Medical collections” refers to unpaid bills sent to collections by a medical facility or health care provider. If you pay a medical bill with a credit card and later default on the credit card account, related collections will not be excluded from your credit reports.
- All other collections: Collections that dont fall into the exception categories above will tend to hurt your credit scores while they remain on your credit reports. Their impact on your scores will diminish over time.
Debt Collection Agencies | How To Deal With Them To Increase Your Credit Score In 2021
FAQ
Can a debt collector pull your credit report?
The FCRA notes that one such permissible purpose is to review your credit information in connection with the collection of a debt. Thus, if you owe money to a debt collector, the debt collector has the legal right to pull and review your credit report. Debt collectors have a variety of reasons for wanting access to your credit reports.
How often do debt collectors pull a credit report?
Debt collectors would typically pull a credit report once, either at the time they receive the account or at the time they are negotiating repayment options such as a settlement. “, Nick Jarman, president and COO of Delta Outsource Group, and a Credit. com contributor, explains.
Can a debt collector report to a credit reporting agency?
Effective November 30, 2021, an amendment to Regulation F, which implements the FDCPA, says that a debt collector can’t report a debt to the three major credit reporting agencies, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion, before first contacting the consumer. Specifically, before reporting a debt to a credit reporting agency, the debt collector must:
What happens if I owe money to a debt collector?
Thus, if you owe money to a debt collector, the debt collector has the legal right to pull and review your credit report. Debt collectors have a variety of reasons for wanting access to your credit reports. One reason a debt collector might conduct a credit inquiry is if the company cannot locate you.
Can you stop a debt collector from accessing your credit?
Probably not. You’ll usually need to place a credit freeze on your reports to prevent someone from accessing your credit information. But that won’t necessarily stop a debt collector.
How long does it take to remove a collection account?
Once a collection account is on your credit report, the only way to remove it is to wait seven years. The effect of a collection account on your credit score will lessen over time. To help improve your credit going forward, bring any late accounts current, pay down credit card balances and avoid applying for new credit.
How many times a day can a collection agency legally call you?
It is likely that the debt collector is breaking the law if they call you more than seven times in seven days about the same debt, or Within seven days after engaging in a telephone conversation with you about the particular debt.
What is the 7 in 7 rule for collections?
In debt collection, the “7 in 7 rule” says that debt collectors can only call a customer so many times about a single debt. It restricts them to no more than seven attempts to contact the consumer within a seven-day period.
What’s the worst a debt collector can do?
The worst thing a debt collector can do is violate the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) by engaging in abusive, deceptive, or unfair practices. This includes actions like threatening violence, using obscene language, misrepresenting their identity, inflating the debt amount, or threatening legal action they cannot or will not take.
What is the 11 word phrase to stop debt collectors?
This is what you should say to debt collectors if you want them to stop calling you: “Please stop writing to me about this debt.” ” This simple phrase, when sent in writing to a debt collector, legally requires the debt collector to stop contacting you except to notify you of specific actions, such as .