Basics of negotiating with collection agencies on your credit

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	Credit Corner      With Thomas R. McKee
Newsletter Date 5.01.2013
Credit Education for Loan Professionals. In This Issue: Basics of negotiating with Collection Agencies.   Send these Newsletters to your Realtor contacts. You’ll be amazed at how much business it can generate! J     Contact me personally:   Thomas R. McKee New West Credit Consultants 4605 W. 39th St. Sioux Falls, SD 57106 605-323-1316 office 800-900-7481 toll free 877-294-9562 toll free fax www.newwestcc.com tom@newwestcc.com     Have questions about a clients credit? Simply call us or email the credit report for a Free Analysis!	Basics of negotiating with Collection Agencies          These simple tactics work on unsecured debt only, mainly credit cards to include department store cards, medical bills and bounced checks. You cannot negotiate on Liens, Judgments and other items.        Remember you Always want to negotiate for removal of the item. Even when you have a paid collection it is still a negative mark on your report.     There are two basic methods to negotiate with collection agencies.      First of all you will want to negotiate with a manager, not some customer service rep as they usually don’t have the authority. It’s also a good idea to only work with them via written letters so you have a paper trail. 1)      Payment in Full. Let’s say you have a $500 debt with an agency. Offer them $200 to settle the debt and to have the item removed from the Big Three. They have probably only paid pennies on the dollar so trust me, they are profiting.   2)      Set up a payment plan. If you don’t have the cash on hand offer to make monthly payments of which you can afford and make sure to get the agreement in writing! It can be a simple contract that you write up which states that the collection is removed after the agreed upon amount is paid in full.        Given the amount of space we have in our Newsletter there is certainly much more information that we could talk about on this subject. Thus we have only touched upon the “basics”. If you have any questions feel free to contact me.   Yours in Credit Education,   Thomas R. McKee