About 2 years ago, summer of 2014, I let a $1400 University payment go to collections as I was unemployed and had literally no way to pay a cent. Fast-forward a bit to Feb 2016 and I got a great paying job. A few months ago I started saving up to finally pay off this debt. Once I had the full $1400 saved I contacted the collection agency who now owned the debt and was told that there was now a couple of $50 late fees from the University and administrative collection fee from the agency for an additional $500. I was devastated. I informed them I would pay the $1400 I owe and any late fees administered by the university, but I was in no way going to pay them the full $2000 they now claimed I owed. I went up the chain of command from supervisor to supervisor in hopes of coming to an agreement without result... No matter who I spoke to I was told they would gladly take my $1500 but I would still owe them the rest. The account would not be closed until I paid everything in full. This went on for a few more weeks where they would call and I would argue my way up the chain. Nada...
Last month I discovered Credit Karma and the ability to dispute a collection claim. I was obviously thrilled and disputed the debt through CK citing "The balance is incorrect." I waited a month and was unfortunately met with a "this account is correct" message or something to that effect when TransUnion completed their investigation. I resigned myself to the fact that this would stay on my credit report until the statute of limitations ran out. However, something strange happened this morning 2 weeks after their investigation. I checked CK and noticed that my credit score on TransUnion and Equifax shot up by 40 and 25 points respectively. Looking at the derogatory marks on both reports shows that the $2000 collection is now gone.
Frankly I'm a little perplexed at what happened to the mark on the report if the account was found to be "correct." I'm left with a myriad of questions, but predominantly... Is this an error on the part of TransUnion? Is the derogatory mark now gone for good, or will it pop back up unexpectedly? I want to do the responsible thing and pay the $1500 I owe; this will reopen the account, no?
Does /r/personalfinance have an explanation or any advice?
Submitted July 10, 2017 at 01:45AM by culturenurse http://ift.tt/2tYJE1T
