I received my credit report form Equifax. I seen that the collection agency thats been calling and sending dunning letters had a inquiry in the section that says inquiries that display to companies (may impact your credit score). Is that a hard inquiry? The account the collection agency is trying to collect on has never been reported on credit report in 8 years. Can they make that type of inquiry?

Yes, that is a hard. How old is this account? It sounds like it is out of SOL....

I had went to college in Louisiana 1996, withdrew in oct 1996. no student loans. I reside in Texas. Its tuition and fees that I owe the school. I wrote them in 1997 that i would pay $100/mo. I only paid 2 months. I still owe $1775. July 1997 was the last activity. Its been almost 8 years. The school never reported it to the credit bureaus so it never appeared on my credit report at all. That's why I had questions why the collection agency did a hard inquiry when the account is not there.

Funny, I just had a school collection show up after 7 years. Who's the CA in your case?

I just had a school collection show up after 14 years, and am in the DV process with Williams & Fudge. Should we cross-post in the Student Loan Forum? Just a thought.

Oops, middle of the night brain-drain moment. My thought about the cross-post was that often schools use the same CA for tuition collections as they do for student loans that are held by the school, such as Perkins loans.

Its Williams & Fudge. The account is not on my credit report it never has been in almost 8 years. They pulled a hard inquiry when the school never reported to the CRA. Can they do that? Would the account be classified as a contract or promissory note. What should I do since they can't report it on my credit report its been over 7 years?

After recently being denied a CC, I decided to start the credit journey in August. When I pulled my first report, I was surprised to see that Williams & Fudge are the ones driving my EQ score down...they've pulled 3 hards in 10 months. This is odd, as the first letter I received from them was in August.

I received the green card back two weeks ago (it was a limited CD and DV letter combined), but I haven't received any validation from them yet.

Keep and eye out to see if they continue to pull hards on you.

This account is not on my credit report. If I validate, can the collection agency report it on my credit report? The account is almost 8 years old.

Williams & Fudge keep doing hard inquiries, but the aren't reporting negative tradelines. I sent them a CMRR limited CD with a request for validation a few weeks ago, but they haven't responded.

Any updates with yours DL5?

I haven't sent them a validation letter yet. I'm new at this. What is a CMRR and a CD. Where can I get help with writing a validation letter?

CMRR is Certified Mail Return Receipt Requested, "the green cards". Some people call it CMRRR. There is a difference between CD--Cease and Desist--which means do not contact me unless you intend to take legal action, and limited CD, which means they may continue to contact you at this point, but only via US Mail. I have the perfect validation/limited CD letter (that I tweaked after finding it in the letters database), but it's on my work computer. I'll pull it up and post it here Monday a.m. You also may want to search the database on this site, find something you think would work for your situation, and post it here for comments before mailing.

Any time you're dealing with a CA--Collection Agency--if you've disputed and they are unable to provide full validation (and believe me, you have the right to ask for a lot of documentation), they can't add anything to your report. In fact, they can't even do another inquiry.

I know it seems like you'll have to keep pushing the envelope, but you'll get through this. As for something showing up on your CR, in my experience, Williams & Fudge pulls inquiries, but hasn't put the collection on the reports in 18 months.