How To Remove Penn Credit from Your Credit Report
Has your credit score recently taken a dive as a result of a collections entry from Penn Credit?
If you forgot to pay a bill or you’ve gotten behind on payments to a lender or service provider, it can have some nasty effects on your credit.
Avoiding the problem won’t make it go away, but paying your debt won’t necessarily solve anything, either.
Instead, you should try one of the approaches featured below to get Penn Credit Corporation off your credit report and out of your hair, boosting your score in the process.
Today, we’ll walk you through all the details you need to know about Penn Credit and debt collectors in general so you can have them taken off your report in no time.
What Is Penn Credit Corporation?
Is Penn Credit a legitimate company? Penn Credit Corporation is a legitimate debt collector, one that is headquartered in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
It’s been in the business of collecting on consumer debts since 1987. The company has around 200 employees on staff and collected $19 million of debt in 2019 alone.
You can write to Penn Credit at their mailing address:
2800 Commerce Drive
Harrisburg, PA 17110
Penn Credit might pop up on your credit report under a few other names, such as:
- CBE Collections
- Penn credit PCC trust
- Penn collection agency
- Penn credit corporation
- Penn credit corp
Steps to Remove Penn Credit from Your Credit Report
Thankfully, you can get a collection off your report pretty easily.
Try out one of the approaches below, and you could be collections-free in a few weeks.
Get Your Debt Validated
The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act is great for a lot of reasons, one being that it requires collections agencies to present proof of a debt before you’re required to make a payment.
If you write to Penn requesting validation of your debt within a month of them reaching out to you, they have to provide you with documentation.
Just grab a sample debt validation letter online, plug in your details, and mail it in.
Reporting errors are common, and there’s a chance you ended up on Penn Credit’s radar by mistake. If that’s the case, debt validation should clear things up quickly.
Even more good news: this approach can work even if the debt is legit.
How? Since Penn is a third-party debt collector, it may not have the info on file that it needs to validate your debt.
When that happens, they’ll update the credit bureaus, resulting in the deletion of the collections entry from your report.
Just remember that timing is key to this strategy. You have to act quickly to make a dispute.
Negotiate a Payment
Sometimes, debt collectors have what they need to validate your debt. If that happened, or it’s too late for debt validation, this strategy is for you.
If you can’t get Penn off your report for free, you should at least attempt to get a discount.
Debt collectors are prone to agree to a pay-for-delete agreement. That’s where you agree to pay Penn at least a portion of the debt you owe in exchange for their deletion from your credit report.
Since third-party debt collectors purchase debts for pennies on the dollar, they’re likely to consider a partial payment a win.
Start negotiating at around 50% of your total balance. You could walk away collections-free and only have to pay half of what you owe.
Once Penn receives your payment, they’ll report your payment to the credit bureaus and the collections entry will be deleted from your report.
If things don’t go as planned and your report doesn’t reflect your payment after 30 days, you should contact the collection agency again to ensure that they follow through.
This is where written correspondence comes in handy. With your letters in hand, you should be able to clearly show Penn the terms of the agreement and hold them accountable.
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Hire a Credit Repair Professional
You can totally handle a debt collector on your own with the tips above, but there is another option.
If you don’t have the time to deal with Penn or you’re looking for more comprehensive credit repair, you may want to turn to the professionals.
Credit repair companies provide top-notch service at reasonable prices, helping you with every step of repairing your credit.
They can talk to debt collectors for you, dispute debts, and help you recover from negative entries from:
There are plenty of options out there, but these are our top picks for the best credit repair companies.
Dealing with debt collectors doesn’t have to be stressful. With the DIY strategies above or the help of a credit repair company, you can get collections entries off your report with ease.
How Does Penn Credit Work?
Penn Credit Corp is a third-party debt collector, profiting by collecting payments from consumers on their outstanding debts.
Agencies like Penn either purchase debts from lenders and service providers at a low rate or they are employed by the creditor and receive a percentage of payments that are successfully collected.
When your debt reaches the collection stage, a negative entry will be placed on your credit report and Penn can call, leave you messages, and mail you notices.
While a collections entry does less and less damage to your credit score as the years go by, it does stay on your report for 7 years.
That’s true regardless of whether you make a payment or not.
Who Does Penn Credit Collect For?
Penn Credit collects for a long list of providers and creditors in multiple industries and sectors nationwide. These include:
- Healthcare
- Education
- Government
- Utilities
- Telecommunications
Dealing with Penn Credit
If Penn Credit is contacting you, you need to understand your basic rights under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.
It’s a law that keeps debt collectors from harassing you, among other things.
Penn Credit has a lot of complaints from consumers, filed with the BBB and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
People who’ve dealt with Penn Credit have complained about their failure to validate debts, harassing communications, and faulty reporting.
That’s where the FDCPA comes in. It limits the hours during which Penn can contact you, requires them to authenticate their claims, and keeps them from threatening you or your loved ones.
It also allows you to stop Penn’s calls and only correspond with them in writing. This is a crucial step to take.
Not only does it free up your phone from frustrating calls, but it also gives you the documentation you might need to have the collections agency removed from your report.
The post How To Remove Penn Credit from Your Credit Report appeared first on Better Credit Blog | Credit Help For Bad Credit.
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