Hi, sorry for the late reply.
I paid in full for the two collections I had. The amounts owed were not high (one was less than $100, the other one was a little overt $200) so I was willing to pay in full in order to have the tradelines removed without much negotiation. If it had been over $400 I would’ve tried to settle for a lower payment.
A couple of years ago I settled a credit card for less than 50% of the debt, but I didn’t know about pay for deletes back then…now I have a paid charge off on my report.. Will be there until 2015. I’ve tried doing the goodwill thing, with no results. So I recommend you do everything you can to remove them. There’s really not much you can do after you’ve paid.
I’m going to try to settle some collections my wife has that are over $500, so I’ll report back as soon as I have news. Let us know how your pay for delete went.