Does anyone know if it’s legal for a debt collector to list a debt it purchased from the original lender on your credit report along with the original debt? Is it legal for one’s credit score to be impacted by two versions of one debt? Is is legal for the debt collector to list the debt as newer than the original date, if they’ve NEVER gotten a payment or admission of debt? Thanks.
Hi @Philip_Hamilton, based on your brief description it seems like it could be one of several different things going on here. We would need to take a closer look at the paperwork to determine what is going on for sure.
One thing that might be going on here is simply a mistake in the info the creditor is reporting to the credit reporting agencies. If that is what is going on here, you can dispute the error and hopefully get one of the debts removed. We have a dispute tool to help here: Dispute Errors on Your Credit Report — The Debt Collective
Sometimes debt collectors double-sell the same debt. When that happens two different people think they “own” your debt and both try to collect on it. Both might independently report that debt to the credit reporting agencies. If that is what is going on here, then someone (probably one of the debt buyers) is not following the law and you might be able to successfully dispute the underlying debt(s).
Lastly, it could be that nothing is actually “improper” here. They way debts work is often very complicated. It could be that what appears to be a single debt to you, the user, is behind the scenes broken into multiple debts that look similar. Again, we’d have to look at the paperwork and maybe make some phone calls to find out more.
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