Notice an entry from Mccarthy Burgess & Wolff on your credit report?
If MB&W is contacting you and has made an appearance on your report, it’s important to act quickly to get it removed.
When a collections account makes its way onto your report, it can do a surprising amount of damage to your credit score.
While paying off the debts you owe to the agency might seem like a simple solution, it won’t help to boost your score like the strategies below.
In today’s guide, we’ll show you exactly how to stop the agency’s calls, get them off your credit report for good, and improve your score, fast.
What Is Mccarthy Burgess & Wolff?
Mccarthy Burgess & Wolff isn’t a household name, so finding it listed on your credit report may have raised some red flags.
If you’re wondering whether the company is a scam or not, you can relax, knowing that it is completely legitimate.
The agency has been in the business of debt collection since 1980. Though they collect from debtors across the nation, their headquarters are in Cleveland, Ohio.
Unlike service providers or banks that may appear on your credit report, MB&W is a debt collection agency.
These agencies typically purchase debts from companies at discounted rates, proceeding to hound consumers until they agree to make a payment.
According to its website, the agency offers several debt-related services to businesses, including:
- Third-party debt collections (as described above)
- Outsourcing debt collections
- Customer retention services
- Litigation management
- Collections reporting
- Collections consulting
The agency collects on several types of debts, like credit cards, utility bills, student loans, medical bills, and auto loans.
How Does Mccarthy Burgess & Wolff Work?
When you fall behind on payments, businesses often turn to collection agencies to seek repayment, either selling them the debt outright or paying for their assistance.
At that stage, a collections entry is placed on your credit report, and the agency can call you repeatedly and send letters until you arrange a payment.
Collections entries can drop your score anywhere from a few points to more than a hundred depending on your debt amount and other credit factors.
Collection entries do both short term and long term damage to your score, staying on your report for seven years, whether you make a payment or not.
But there’s good news. With the solutions below, you can get a debt collector off your call list and your credit report in a few weeks’ time.
3 Ways to Remove Mccarthy Burgess & Wolff from Your Credit Report
Ready to stop MB&W’s phone calls and fix the damage done to your score?
With one of the three approaches below, you can get the collection agency removed from your credit report completely.
Here’s how:
- Submit a debt validation letter
- Arrange a pay-for-delete agreement
- Use a credit repair company
1. Submit a Debt Validation Letter
Another important benefit of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act is that it requires debt collectors to validate any debts they’re attempting to collect.
All you have to do is ask. If you mail the company a basic debt validation letter within 30 days, the company is legally required to provide verification of the debt.
If they’re unable to provide validation, the collections account entry will be deleted from your credit report, and the agency will no longer call you.
It’s a good idea to use a credit monitoring service to stay on top of any changes to your report so you can react quickly when an entry is added to your report.
Whether you fear you’ve been contacted by mistake or you do actually owe the collections agency money, starting out with a debt validation letter is smart.
Third-party debt collectors don’t always have the documentation they need to validate debt, so you could end up getting your debts forgiven without spending a dime.
2. Arrange a Pay-for-delete Agreement
Have 30 days come and gone? If you’re too late for a debt validation letter, you should work out what’s known as a pay-for-delete agreement with the debt collector.
While logging onto Mccarthy’s website and paying your debt in full might seem like the right course of action, it won’t necessarily get the account off your credit report.
Instead, you should get the agency to agree to have the collections entry removed from your credit report in exchange for a payment.
Since debt collectors get a deal on the debts they purchase, they’re usually willing to accept a negotiated repayment.
That means you could put an end to the collection calls and get the entry off your report, while only paying a fraction of what you owe.
Be sure to negotiate with the agency via letter, getting the terms of the agreement in writing in case anything goes wrong.
When you arrange a pay-for-delete agreement, you can expect to see quick results.
If the collections entry is still on your report after 30 days, you should follow up to ensure that the agency reports your payment to the credit bureaus.
3. Use a Credit Repair Company
Don’t want to deal with Mccarthy Burgess & Wolff yourself? A credit repair company can help.
Confronting a collections agency can be stressful. If you feel like you’re in over your head, or you simply don’t have the time to go back and forth with collectors, it may be time to hire a credit repair company.
These companies are pros at disputing claims and getting debt collectors off of your report.
They’ll also be there if a debt collector tries to garnish your wages or file a lawsuit.
The Credit People offers some of the most affordable credit repair services on the market, with excellent customer reviews.
Whether you choose to repair your credit yourself or pay for help, you can easily get your score back on track.
Dealing with Mccarthy Burgess & Wolff
Hundreds of individuals have filed complaints against MB&W.
The Better Business Bureau and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau provide an honest look into people’s experiences with debt collectors.
Like most debt collection agencies, Mccarthy has received complaints for inaccurate credit reporting, harassment, and failing to provide validation for debts.
Debt collectors are notorious for harassing clients with incessant phone calls.
As a consumer, it’s important to understand the protections granted to you by the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.
The act holds debt collectors to certain standards, like prohibiting them from calling you at work and hindering them from contacting your loved ones about your debt.
Even better, it lets you set the terms of your correspondence, choosing to only communicate by mail.
Not only does this eliminate annoying phone calls, but it also allows you to document every interaction between you and the collections agency, which is a crucial part of repairing your credit.
