<prompt> Human: My GF owns the property her mom lives at, and until recently, the utility bills were in my GFs name. In June, her mother finally got the electric bill over into her name. But she neglected to mention that there was 3 months worth of electricity that wasnt paid from Mar - May. My GF has had CONSTANT trouble with the electric provider never sending bills to both addresses, for some reason they say it cant be done, they can only go to the place getting the service. She also has her phone number and email on the account, and in the past they have notified her when a bill hasnt been paid, but they never did that this time. Her mom claimed she paid the remaining balance, and while its possible she thought she did and forgot, odds are she saw the bill and just thought not my problem and ignored it. So yesterday my GF got a call from a collections agency saying they bought the debt from the utility company, around 500, and they reported it to the credit agencies. My GF is FREAKING OUT. Shes 28, and recently finally got her credit pretty good, upper 700s. Shes never had bad credit, but shes just never had a LOT of credit, so it took her a while of just making regular payments on small balance CCs and student loans to get to this point. Now shes worried shell have this collections notice on her credit report for 5-7 years, and it will impact her score and drop it to the mid to low 600s. She is trying to get in touch with a manager that the collections agency its at least a smaller locally-based one, that seems like its better than some national one? to see if anything can be done other than just pay the debt, but Im just looking for any other advice in terms of what cancant be done to get rid of the item on a credit report, or if a single bill going to collections is as bad as it seems if she ever wants to get credit for a new car, house renovations, etc...? TL;DR: My GF has a first ever bill go to collections because of her mother and is wondering if theres any options to remove it from a credit report or if it will impact her as bad as she thinks?  <response>: Your GF just learned a valuable lesson, anything that is under her name she should always keep an eye on it and never trust anyone else to pay for it. Contact the collection agency and do a pay for deletion, where the money comes from depends on her and her mothers relationship. 