There are some things you need to know about debt collectors when you begin the process of credit repair. For starters, you need to know if the individual attempting to collect on your past due account works for the company (creditor) that extended the credit to you in the first place. Or, is it a representative from a collection agency or an attorney contracted by the creditor to collect the debt?

In some cases a creditor will establish another office under a different name purely intended to collect on outstanding balances. Your have different legal rights depending on who is calling you to collect, and this boils down to using different strategies in your response.

The following tips will help you when dealing with the actual creditor and not an outside credit agency…

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If you have past due balances, you can contact the creditor and start resolving your credit problems. The first thing step is to ask the creditor if the information about the bad debt showing up in your credit file can be removed in exchange for making a full or partial payment.

They are not always willing to withdraw the report, but you may get lucky this time if you are sufficiently convincing. Make sure you get the confirmation in writing if they are agreeable to this action. Request the creditor be willing to acknowledge when you have paid off your debt by submitting a Universal Data Form to the credit agencies on order to delete the account/trade line from your credit report.

If the result of your negotiations with the creditor means you go on a new schedule for repayment of the debt, think about requesting they “re-age” your account. This makes the current month the first month of repayment, and in essence stops reporting your payments as late. You may need to make a few payments before the creditor agrees to “re-age” your account.

Think about this before you do it. If your account has been delinquent for a few years, when the account is “re-aged” you start from ground zero and the account will show up for 7 more years in your credit file, rather than 7 years from the date of the original delinquency. For this reason it might be a bad idea, especially if you are close to the end of the original 7-year period. If the account has not been in default for more than a could years you it could be advantageous to have it “re-aged,” since it will now show as current.

Before you start negotiating with the creditor, it’s advisable to know exactly where you are in the process. You can ascertain this information if you kept the very first “polite” letter from the creditor reminding you of your payment and thanking you if you’ve already dropped it in the mail. This is a form letter most firms send out before an account is even past due. By the time you get the second letter speaking if the missing payment, your credit may have been suspended. It’s at this point you can determine your level of credit repair.