A few years ago, I got a call from a collection agency that, for some reason, I didn’t want to handle at the time and I may have asked them to call back later. Anyway, it’s been years and I’ve heard nary a peep, and the last credit report I pulled had no accounts in collection listed and I’m NOT getting calls or letters to my knowledge, though, I admit it’s possible that they could have fouled my address or phone number and they have been trying in vain to contact me over the years. Is there any way to investigate this outside of my credit report? I don’t have the name of the collection agency or the original creditor. I don’t want this to suddenly show up again at the wrong point in my life (e.g. a week before buying a house, or during a security clearance investigation).
I also am willing to admit that the call could have been a scam attempt and the reason I never got called again was because they either were caught, decided to quit crime, or decided that I was not the best target for their efforts. But, I have no way of verifying this.
Is it basically “out of sight, out of mind” in a real sense, or is there some collection agency industry organization that I can call that can search delinquent account/collections databases for me?
Unless you pull your phone bill and trace the phone number, I don’t know what you can do. I also don’t know why you’d want to do it. If there’s an alleged debt and someone doesn’t want to try to collect on it, then so be it… especially if it’s years old and the statute of limitation may have expired.
Just keep an eye on your credit report, with occasional pulls to check for accuracy that you should do anyway. Alternatively, you could sign up for a credit report alert service.
banks, credit card companies and other lending institutions are not the greatest when it comes to record keeping or updating borrower status with counterparties (e.g. collection agencies.) once collectors kept bugging me for two years regarding my wife’s account which we settled three years back.
what’s important is you keep some kind of correspondence with your lenders (at least once a year) and make sure you have documents proving your account(s) are either current or fully settled.
Why don’t you just request a credit report from the 3 bureaus?
Was it definitely for actual credit, rather than bad/forged checks of some kind ?
If its something banking related that’s not strictly credit the entry will end up in the Chex Systems database NOT the regular “big three” agencies. So check that too (they are a credit reporting agency under the FCRA so have to give you a free report):
https://www.consumerdebit.com/consumerinfo/us/en/index.htm
I’d say…
You don’t know who called, why that person called, if that person was contacting the correct party, whether any alleged debt that person may have been calling about was actually a valid debt, whether the alleged debt was owed by you, whether the alleged debt or any information pertaining thereto was owed to the person who called, whether the person who called had any right or interest in collecting the alleged debt, whether the person who called was an agent of the alleged original creditor, etc…
…and leave it at that.
If some stranger called wanting to talk to me about some alleged debt and asking for my personal information “for verification purposes” then I’d likely tell 'em to piss off… or just hang up.
If you want to resolve what you know to be a debt, then you might take it upon yourself to contact the original creditor and either work it out or find out from the original creditor who owns the collection rights so you can contact them.