<prompt> Human: Over the last year, I 24m have been working on getting my credit straightened out. In that time I have moved from a 592 to 720 based on CreditKarma. I also have had kidney stones almost yearly from 2005 to today and that has led me to several ERs and doctor visits which are costly. I was stupid when I was younger and neglected to pay or set up payment plans to get these resolved. As of today, most of those have fallen off my credit report verified a few days ago. There are still 2 that are on separate credit reports and should be falling off in the next year to year and a half, so I am just waiting on those. Now for the fun part. I get on Credit Karma to see if there were any changes, and did I get a shock when I saw my score went to 627. I found that a new collections mark appeared. I thought that I could just callemail the credit bureaus and just dispute it, seeing that the stated first delinquency was 032009 and I havent seen any notification in that time frame. Since 032009 I have moved 4 times and the first time the house burned down 22010 - taking all my documents with it. Each time I have set up mail forwarding through the USPS to make sure everything gets to me. Since the house fire, I have nothing from anyone stating that I owe on this account. After I got the letter that I had lost my dispute, I looked up the statute of limitations for my state TX and it is 4 years. It seems off that less then 1 month before SoL runs out, I get this account in collections with no letters from the new creditor. Are there any other options I have to get this off my records, preferably with out having to pay any of it? It is for 630, and while that isnt the end of the world, I am still paying for my past mistakes which I should be done around June of this year and am already stretched thin financially. tl;dr: Been building my credit score since last year, doing well, then out of the blue an account goes into collections less then a month before statute of limitations runs out, with no letters from the new creditor. Looking for a way to get this off my record, preferably without paying full amount.Assistant: Was this for a debt you legitimately owed, and they just didnt reach out to you this whole time... or tried and couldnt get a hold of you? Or is this something random that really isnt your debt?Human: There is a possibility that it is something I owed since I was in and out of hospitals, however, I can not verify as my house burned down. I am leaning towards they didnt try to contact me. If they did, I would have gotten it as I always forwarded my mail when I moved. I didnt change my phone number for almost 3 years after the stated date as well. I find it hard to believe that in the last 3.9 years, they were unable to find me, and really hard to believe they tried send anything in the first 2 years that I didnt get after the fire.The dispute letter stated that it is verified my debt, dont know how they go about that in around 2 days or so though.Assistant: There are a few ways to go about this, depending on how aggressive you want to be in dealing with the collector.You could send them a debt validation letter google for a template if youre not familiar with it and theyll likely send you a copy of the original bill and account information for your debt. If they cant or dont, they have to stop attempting to collect and you can use their non-response to work with the bureaus to have it removed from your report. Im going to go out on a limb and say this is probably a legitimate debt they have documentation for, though... so...You could call the collectors or original owner of the debt whatever hospitaldoctor you owed the money to and explain the situation, and see how much theyre willing to work with you. A 4 year old medical debt should be able to get settled for wayyy less than the original balance. You can and should ask for a pay for delete as well, but Im not sure what your success likelihood on that would be.Human: Thanks for your reply! I am willing to work to get this either removed, it would hopefully be financially beneficial as well as a learning experience if something like this happens again which I am trying my hardest to avoid. Do you think the tone would change if I send a debt validation letter to them and they respond, to then turn around and ask for a lower settlement?  <response>: Do you think the tone would change if I send a debt validation letter to them and they respond, to then turn around and ask for a lower settlement? Its possible, collectors can be purposefully unpredictable to frustrate you into giving them money. Honestly, Id probably start by calling the original bill place and seeing if they can still call the debt back from the collections agency - if they can, it would be easier to work with a hospital or doctors office. If they cant, Id call the collectors to see how they react... if they get uppity, Id just hang up and go straight for the DV letter. 