Hello jmhunter,
You should never trust collection agencies. The first thing you should’ve done is request a letter stating that they would delete the negative tradelines from your report if you paid in full. Collection agencies are only after your money, and once you pay they usually don’t have any interest or reason in helping you out anymore.
Did they tell you they were going to delete the collections from your reports? If so, cross your fingers that they will follow through with what they said. Some will, some will not. That’s why you should never trust them and ask for everything in writing.
I had a bad experience with a collection agency recently. They said they were going to delete if I paid in full. I was naive and trusted them and didn’t ask for this in writing (I actually did and they ignored me). I should’ve been more insistent but decided to pay anyway. They just updated the status of my collection to “PAID”, which is almost as bad as not paying, because it still stays on your report for 7 years. For 5 months now, I’ve been sending them letters and asking them nicely to delete (which is pretty much the only thing I can do now). They have deleted from Experian and TransUnion so far, not from Equifax so I’ve been somewhat successful, but it has been a pain. I just sent them another letter 3 days ago hoping that they’ll finally delete from Equifax.
The best thing you can do is to try to deal directly with the original creditor or collection agency. The credit bureaus will not delete your tradelines, because they are reporting correctly: You didn’t pay on time, it went to collections, then you paid.
When negotiating you got to be patient and try not to get nasty on these people. You need to have them on your side so they can work with you. Communicating by mail is most of the time the best way to deal with them, as you have proof of everything.
I had a totally different experience with another agency. I said I would only pay if they sent me a letter sating that they would delete from my credit reports if I did. They sent me the letter, I paid and they proceeded to delete the collection from all my reports.