Negotiating with a creditor or debt collector? What do you do if creditor/collector offers to change your credit reporting from “delinquent” to “paid in full” or “settled in full”? Just FYI, both are highly derogatory credit marks and will damage your credit score just as much as a delinquent payment. Better solution: negotiate for a complete deletion of the tradeline, i.e. negotiate for deletion of any reference to the account whatsoever on your credit reports. This comment from Chi Chi Wu, credit expert and goddess with the National Consumer Law Center in Boston: “Key is to negotiate the deletion if the entire trade. This is called “pay for deletion” -ie my client will pay if you remove the entire tradeline. You may get resistance or a rejection of this proposal from the furnisher. They may even claim it’s illegal (it’s not in my opinion). The willingness to do this will probably depend on whether the furnisher is a debt collector or the original creditor.”
