How to Get Settled Debt Off Your Credit

Negative debt accounts still have an adverse effect on your credit even after you have settled with the company or debt collectors. The debt will not fall off of your credit report on its own until it is over seven years old. You do have a few options to attempt to get it removed sooner, although the effectiveness of these methods depends on the company and credit reporting bureaus.

Instructions

1

Obtain a copy of your credit report from Experian, Equifax and Transunion. If you have not already requested your free annual credit report, go to annualcreditreport.com and follow the onscreen instructions to get a free copy of each of your reports.

2

Check the age of the settled debt. If your debt is close to the seven-year mark, you may wish to wait for the debt to fall off on its own. The date is calculated from your last payment, not the opening of the account.

3

Contact the company you settled the debt with. If your account was a charged-off account, in most cases you'll need to contact the original creditor. If the original company passed the account to a collection agency, you need to contact the agency.

4

Ask the company whether it will remove the settled debt from your credit report. The company is not legally obligated to do so, but it may consider your request. You can also inquire about paying for delete if you have not already settled the debt. A pay-for-delete arrangement has the company remove the account off of your credit report in exchange for a negotiated payment.

5

Dispute some aspect of the account with the credit reporting agencies. If the company refuses to remove the account from your report but the report listing contains factual errors, you can dispute the account information. If the credit reporting agency cannot verify the data, it will delete this account from your report.