How Long Do Collections Stay on Your Credit Report?

What Are Collections on Your Credit Report?

A collection account on your credit report is a record of a defaulted debt. It usually represents a debt that has gone unpaid for at least 120 days that the creditor has turned over to a debt collector. The collector can be from an in-house collection department, a third-party collection agency or a debt buyer who assumes the debt.

Once they make contact with you about the debt, the collector typically notifies the credit bureaus—Experian, TransUnion and Equifax—that they have taken over the debt and indicates the amount they are seeking. That information then appears on your credit report, where it can negatively affect your credit scores.

Tip: Collections are often associated with types of consumer debt routinely tracked on credit reports, such as installment loans and credit cards. But they can also include bills that don't normally appear on credit reports, such as unpaid utility or medical bills.

What Happens When an Account Goes Into Collections?

A creditor typically sends an account to collections only after you've missed several consecutive payments, and only after multiple attempts to reach you to arrange payment. If those efforts fail and they turn the debt over to a collection agency, here's what happens:

• The collector issues a debt validation letter. When the debt collector takes over the debt, they will reach out to you by phone, text, email or postal mail to attempt to collect the debt. Within five days of that initial contact, they must send a debt validation letter by postal mail or email. The letter spells out the source of the debt, the amount you owe and contact information for the collection agent. If you think any information in the letter is inaccurate, you have 30 days from receipt of the letter to request verification in writing.
• The collection account may appear in your credit reports. The debt collector may report the collection account to the credit bureaus. If the collection is related to one of your existing debt accounts, that account will be marked closed or transferred. The new collection account will appear as a separate account on your credit report.
• Efforts to get payment will continue—or escalate. By law, a collection agent may attempt to gain payment by phone, email, text message or social media but they cannot harass you. You have the right to ask collectors to stop contacting you.
• The collector might sue. A collector may file a lawsuit against you and, if successful, may be able to garnish your wages or bank account.

Learn more: How Does Debt Collection Work?

What Debt Can Be Sent to Collections?

Unpaid debts that can go into collections include all consumer debts normally tracked on your credit reports (such as student loans, car loans, mortgages and credit cards) and many other financial obligations, if you fail to pay them as agreed. These include:

• Utility bills (cellphone, cable or internet)
• Professional services (medical or dental treatment, contractor services and the like)
• Government-imposed fines or fees

If you default on a debt secured by collateral such as a car loan or mortgage, the creditor might pursue repossession (in the case of a vehicle) or foreclosure (in the case of real property), then sell the collateral to recover its money. If the sale doesn't recover everything you owe, the outstanding deficiency balance could be sent to collections.

Learn more: How to Find Out What Debts You Have in Collections

How Long Do Collections Stay on Your Credit Report?

A collection account can stay on your credit report for up to seven years from the debt's original delinquency date. That's the first in the series of missed payments that led to the debt being turned over for collection.

Example: Let's suppose you miss a loan payment in June, bring the account current in July, and then stop making payments in December. When the account goes to collections in March and subsequently appears on your credit reports, the seven-year countdown to its expiration will start in December, since that missed payment was first in the chain of delinquencies that sent the account into collections.

How Collections Impact Your Credit

Late payments and collection accounts could hurt your credit scores as long as they appear on your credit report. Their exact impact can depend on what else is in your credit report, the nature and amount of a given collection account, and whether or not you pay the collector the amount they seek.

Here's an overview of how collections impact commonly used VantageScore^® credit scores and FICO^® Scores^☉.

Here's more detail on how each type of collection impacts your credit scores:

• Paid collections: Under some circumstances, paying a debt collector what you owe them can eliminate a collection's negative impact on your credit. Recent versions of VantageScore and FICO^® Score credit scoring models ignore paid collection accounts, but many lenders may still be using older versions of those systems that don't ignore paid collections.
• Small collections: The latest versions of the FICO^® Score—FICO^® Scores 8, 9 and 10—ignore collections for debts of less than $100, whether they're paid or unpaid, while the latest versions of the VantageScore credit score—VantageScore 3.0 and VantageScore 4.0—ignore collections for less than $250, whether they're paid or unpaid.
• Medical collections under $500: If paid or less than one year old, medical collections for less than $500 are excluded from your credit reports and do not affect your credit scores. A rule change by the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) would have removed all medical bills from credit reports in March 2025, but implementation has been delayed. Versions 3.0 and 4.0 of the VantageScore credit scoring system ignore any medical debt included in your credit reports.
  

  Tip: "Medical collections" refers to unpaid bills sent to collections by a medical facility or health care provider. If you pay a medical bill with a credit card and later default on the credit card account, related collections will not be excluded from your credit reports.

• All other collections: Collections that don't fall into the exception categories above will tend to hurt your credit scores while they remain on your credit reports. Their impact on your scores will diminish over time.

Learn more: Can Paying Off Collections Raise Your Credit Score?

How to Dispute a Collection on Your Credit Report

You have the right to dispute any inaccurate information that appears on your credit reports, and that includes collection accounts on debts that may have been misattributed to you or that result from fraud. If you see a collection account on your credit report and don't recognize the debt associated with it, you have the right to do the following.

1. Contact the debt collector. If you believe that the collection account was reported in error, start by contacting the collector to let them know your concerns.
2. Request written verification of the debt. If you send a written debt verification request to the collector within 30 days of receiving the initial debt validation letter, the collector must verify the debt with your original creditor and pause collection attempts until they get a response. This could give you time to gather proof that the debt is not yours.
3. As appropriate, alert law enforcement. If the collection is legitimate (perhaps it's for a service you used that was billed using a name you didn't recognize), it cannot be removed from your credit report. But if you believe the unpaid debt was fraudulently obtained in your name, notify the collection agent, the original creditor and appropriate law enforcement. The Federal Trade Commission's IdentyTheft.gov website is a good place to begin.
4. Contact the credit reporting bureaus. You have the right to dispute inaccurate collection accounts on your credit reports. You will need to file disputes with each credit bureau separately.

Learn more: How to Dispute Credit Report Information

How to Prevent Collection Accounts

Here are some tips on how to avoid the headaches and hits to your credit score that collection accounts can bring.

• Pay your bills on time. The best way to prevent collection accounts from appearing on your credit reports is to avoid delinquency and default in the first place. Make sure you're paying all your bills on time, every time.
• Be proactive if you're facing hardship. If you're having difficulty paying your bills, reach out to your creditors as soon as possible to see if relief is available. Lenders may offer forbearance programs that let you pause or reduce payments temporarily, and utility companies may have programs you can apply for to assist with your bills. In any case, working in good faith with companies you owe money lowers the odds they'll send your account to collections.
• Check your credit reports regularly. An account you don't recognize could indicate identity theft or other fraudulent activity conducted in your name. Review your credit reports regularly to help you spot and report an unauthorized account as soon as it shows up on your credit report. That, in turn, could help lenders shut down the bogus account before it defaults and gets sent to collection. You can review your credit report for free with Experian.

The Bottom Line

A collection account is a blemish on your credit report that remains for seven years and can harm your credit scores until it expires. You can avoid a collection by paying your bills on time every month, bringing accounts current as soon as possible if you fall behind and checking your credit reports regularly for signs of suspicious accounts. For extra peace of mind concerning unauthorized credit accounts, consider free credit monitoring from Experian, which sends you alerts whenever there's new activity on your Experian credit report.