Collection Agency Disputes – Snail Mail Is Best
First thing you need to be clear on is exactly what a collections agency is. This is a business that acts as an intermediary for creditors. They charge the creditor a fee for this service. Sometimes it is a flat fee and other times it can be a percentage of what they can collect.

Creditors sell accounts to collections agencies as well as hiring them to collection seriously delinquent accounts. Some creditors may have their own collections department. Sometimes as records are being shuffled around that duplicates are sometimes found on your credit report. These are the types of charges that you should dispute and get removed from the report; this could significantly impact your credit score.

There is a protocol for collection agency disputes. When you first receive a notice of collections you have 30 days to challenge the validity of the debt. This is a right guaranteed to you as a part of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. For more information on this right it is located in subsection 809 of the act.

Although there is no time limit for the collections agency to respond they are required to cease collections efforts until they do. As a consumer it is your right to have the debt validated. That is the one reason that you would never want to handle your collection agency disputes online. Time is on your side when you handle your disputes via snail mail.

The collection agency has up until 45 days to give you a response in writing and this is really not enough time to actually investigate thoroughly your claim. The online system works to their advantage and is designed in such a way that it actually makes it easier for them.

There is another reason you should never handle collection agency disputes online and that is lack of a paper trail. Any attorney will tell you that a paper trail is the most important asset you have when fighting for your rights. And the final reason is that the online dispute is treated as an expedited Dispute resolution that is a provision of the “Fair Credit Reporting Act”. This lets creditors omit step number 2 which states that the agency is to report the dispute to the originator of the action. So if the creditor never has any idea that you disputed the debt they will send it to collections again and you will have to start the process all over again.

If you want collection agency disputes to be permanently deleted it is better to take the added time to do it in writing. Online gives the collection agencies a lot of maneuvering room and you can have a debt reinserted that you thought was gone forever.