How to Remove Resurgent Capital Services from Your Credit Report
Resurgent Capital Services (RCS) may call you regarding a debt or appear as a collection account on your credit report. Your score will suffer unless you remove this negative information from your credit history. This article will guide you through the process of dealing with debt collection agencies such as RCS and provide some surefire strategies for getting negative items off your report.
What is RCS?
If Resurgent Capital Services, LP, appears on your credit report or in your voicemail inbox, you may wonder if it’s legitimate or a scam. RCS is a third-party debt collection agency, and it’s legit. If it contacts you, it’s because the agency believes you owe it money.
RCS originated in 1998. It’s part of the Sherman Financial Group, which has its headquarters in Greenville, South Carolina, and additional offices in Cincinnati, Ohio. The Sherman Financial Group also operates LVNV Funding, another collection agency.
You can contact RCS using the address below:
P.O. Box 10497
Greenville, SC 296031
RCS collects a variety of consumer debts, including credit card and medical bills. It's not a credit grantor, nor does it collect business accounts receivable.
How does RCS work?
Debt collection agencies usually work for creditors to help them collect unpaid bills from consumers. They can also buy debts from companies that provide services or funding at a low rate. Regardless of whether it’s a debt buyer or a third-party debt collector, a collection agency has the right to call you regularly and mail you letters about a debt until you pay it.
The repetitive phone calls and letters are annoying, but the real problem is the collection account that appears on your credit report with the three major credit reporting bureaus. This negative payment history can pull down your credit score for up to seven years and make it harder to qualify for a home or car loan. The extent of the damage to your credit depends on other factors in your report, but even if you have an excellent credit score, a 100-point drop is possible.
3 ways to remove RCS from your credit report
The following strategies will help you remove a collection agency from your credit report:
- Ask for proof of the debt
- Negotiate a pay-for-delete agreement
- Pay for a credit repair service
1. Ask for proof of the debt
The federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) requires a debt collector to prove you owe the debt at your request. If you contact RCS and ask for debt validation within 30 days of its first contact with you, it must investigate your case, respond and provide the necessary documentation proving the debt is yours.
Credit reporting mistakes are common. For example, an original lender may send RCS your account number by mistake. If you think RCS made a mistake and that you don’t owe it money, you can send a debt validation letter.
Even if you do owe the money, there’s a chance this strategy can result in the removal of RCS from your credit score. Third-party debt collectors don’t always keep the necessary records when they acquire consumer debts. If RCS can’t prove you owe it money, it must stop calling and writing to you and remove the negative marks from your credit reports with the three major credit bureaus. This won’t mean you don’t owe the money, but it’ll indicate that there’s not enough proof to justify the collection account.
2. Negotiate a pay-for-delete agreement
If you don’t submit a letter requesting validation within 30 days, or if RCS proves you owe the money, you can try to negotiate a pay-for-delete agreement. RCS has one goal: to make you pay your debt. Because it needs your payment to make a profit, you can use your payment as leverage to get the agency to remove its negative information from your credit report. Essentially, you’re proposing a trade: payment of your debt in exchange for the restoration of your credit history.
If you make a payment without a pay-for-delete agreement in place, RCS will stop calling you, but it won’t remove the blemish from your credit report. Instead, you’ll have to wait up to seven years for the RCS entry to disappear. You have a better chance of fixing your credit if you have an unpaid debt.
Start by making a pay-for-delete proposal. It’s OK to call RCS and negotiate over the phone, but don’t send a dime or hand over a credit card or bank account number until you have the agreement in writing. Debt collectors have a bad habit of forgetting deals if you make them over the phone.
You don’t even have to pay the full amount. Consider offering to pay 30% or 50% of the balance in exchange for the removal of the negative item. Any payment you make profits RCS, so there’s no harm in starting the negotiations with a low offer.
If RCS doesn’t remove its negative item, call the agency and remind it about your agreement. You can send a copy of it if necessary. If RCS still doesn’t honor its promise, file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau (BBB) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
3. Pay for a credit repair service
The strategies above are easy enough, but they’ll still take time. If dealing with a collection agency on your own causes you stress, you may want to hire a professional. Professional credit repair services can handle all the negotiations and make sure RCS follows the law and honors your rights under the FDCPA. Credit repair pros can also help you get to the bottom of complicated credit problems, such as dealing with a slew of late payments, recovering from bankruptcy or handling judgments against you.
It’s a good idea to research credit repair companies and find the one that’s right for you. Some credit repair professionals, such as Lexington Law, can help get your credit score up where it needs to be quickly and with minimal effort from you.
Regardless of whether you work with a credit repair company or tackle a collection account on your report yourself, don’t let RCS damage your score any longer.
Dealing with RCS
Before you attempt to deal with RCS, make time to familiarize yourself with your basic rights under the FDCPA. This act restricts debt collectors from using harassing collection practices and protects you against inaccurate credit reporting. Under the FDCPA, debt collection agencies can’t:
- Threaten you or use inappropriate language
- Call you before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m.
- Disclose details about your debt to other people
- Call you at work if you ask them not to
Debt collectors must also communicate with you in writing only if you ask them to. It’s very important to make this request when you’re dealing with RCS and may prove important to getting it off your credit report. Write to RCS and inform the agency you’ll no longer receive its calls and only want to communicate by mail. This will ensure that you have documentation of all your correspondence with RCS in case you ever need to take legal action against it.
If you want to know how other consumers feel about their interactions with RCS, you can search the BBB and CFPB databases for complaints.
Update: This article has been updated to reflect the current contact information for RCS. Unverifiable information has been removed.
Disclaimer: This story was originally published on November 4, 2020, on BetterCreditBlog.org. To find the most relevant information concerning collections or credit card inquiries, please visit: https://money.com/how-to-remove-collections-from-credit-report/ or https://money.com/get-items-removed-from-credit-report/