Well, I have some good news to report (and some not as good as I thought).
The only account in collections that I had was updated today to “Paid”. The good news is that my credit score went from 579 to 636 (a 57 point difference!). The not so good news is that this collection agency had agreed to delete the account from my report completely and they didn’t (and I’m not sure I have enough proof to dispute this)
I’m pretty happy about my score finally improving after many months, but I can’t help thinking that if they had deleted the account I would probably have an even better score now. Any suggestions?