Yes. If a hard inquiry appears on your credit report and you never authorized it, you can dispute it with the credit bureau and ask the company that pulled your credit to have it removed. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, a company needs a permissible purpose — such as a credit application you initiated …
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Medical debt credit reporting has changed a lot since 2022, and in 2026 the rules are a patchwork. The three credit bureaus still follow voluntary policies that remove paid medical collections, exclude medical collections under $500, and wait one year before reporting new medical collections. A broader federal rule that would have removed most medical …
How Medical Debt Collections Rules Changed — and What It Means for Your Credit in 2026 Read More »
AllianceOne is a collection agency best known for collecting court fines, fees, and other government debts — such as unpaid traffic and parking tickets, court costs, and criminal fines and fees — on behalf of hundreds of courts and government agencies, including some California courts. It also collects some consumer accounts for private clients. If …
AllianceOne Is Calling Me — Who Are They and What Do They Want? Read More »
The credit utilization that typically maximizes your score is low but not zero — generally under 10%, with many people seeing their best results somewhere in the 1% to 9% range. Staying under 30% is a helpful rule of thumb, but it’s a ceiling, not a target. Utilization is measured both overall and on each …
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IC System is a third-party collection agency based in Minnesota and founded in 1938. It collects unpaid accounts on behalf of other businesses — often healthcare providers, telecom companies, utilities, and other service providers. If IC System is contacting you or appears on your credit report, it’s collecting a debt for someone else. Whether you …
Some people can raise their credit score by 100 points or more in six months — but not everyone, and no one can guarantee it. The biggest, fastest gains usually come from three situations: very high credit card balances that you pay down, errors on your credit reports that get corrected, and thin credit files …
How to Raise Your Credit Score 100 Points in 6 Months: What’s Realistic Read More »
If Midland Credit Management or Midland Funding has sued you, your options are to file a written answer before the deadline and defend the case, negotiate a settlement, or — in some cases — raise arbitration or bankruptcy. The one thing you shouldn’t do is ignore it: if you don’t respond on time, the court …
Midland Credit Management Is Suing Me — What Are My Options? Read More »
MCM stands for Midland Credit Management, a large debt buyer and servicer that’s part of Encore Capital Group. If MCM is contacting you or appears on your credit report, it most likely bought a charged-off account — usually a credit card — from your original creditor, or it’s servicing an account owned by its affiliate, …
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To negotiate a pay-for-delete, first validate the debt and confirm who owns it, then make a written offer to pay the collection — in full or as a settlement — in exchange for the collector’s agreement to request deletion of the account from all three credit bureaus. Get the agreement in writing and signed before …
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Closing a credit card can hurt your credit score, but often less than people fear — and sometimes not at all. The main risk is credit utilization: closing a card removes its credit limit from your available credit, so if you carry balances on other cards, your utilization rises and your score may drop. Closing …
Does Closing a Credit Card Hurt Your Credit Score? Read More »