It's a violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) for a debt collector to claim they work for a credit reporting agency (CRA). 15 USC § 1692e(16)
Debt collectors can't communicate or threaten to communicate false credit information to a CRA or anyone else. This includes not telling the CRA that a debt is disputed when it actually is.15 USC § 1692e(8)
Even if the information is true, debt collectors can't threaten to report a debt to a CRA if they don't actually plan to do it. Threats to report a debt to a CRA can be considered deceptive if they are confusing or misleading, even if technically true.
Common deceptive claims about credit reporting:
- Saying that payment will improve the consumer's credit rating when it actually won't. This is especially true if the creditor or debt collector doesn't report payment information to CRAs after sending a debt to collections.
- Claiming payment will help credit on very old debts (usually over 7 years old). These debts are considered "obsolete," and CRAs aren't allowed to report negative information about them anymore.
- Threatening to report an obsolete debt to a CRA.
- Saying a debt will stay on a credit report longer than legally allowed.
- Promising payment will improve credit scores, credit ratings or creditworthiness. Collectors usually can't know this for sure since credit decisions involve many complex factors that vary by creditor.
- Promising to completely remove a debt from credit reports. Even if brought current, the late payments and collection activity will still show up and hurt credit ratings unless the collector has the entire tradeline deleted.
