I get asked this question quite often. The reason this question comes up is that the Debt Collectors threaten people by saying: "If you don't pay in 30 days, we are going to put it on your credit" or "We are going to put a charge off on your credit."
People get scared when they hear this because it goes right to the heart of their fears. I'm about to get psychological on you. I believe that people want to pay their debts, and when they cannot pay the bills as they come due, it weighs very heavily on their minds and crushes their self-image.
So, here comes the debt collectors with their "piling on" mentality, just throwing out more insults and threats to scare the already beaten down individual. The simple answer is that the blemish on the credit report usually comes from the original creditor, not the debt collectors.
Think about it for a minute. If you had a Visa Card from Chase and you missed 6 months' worth of payments, you have to know that your credit report is going to be dinged a little bit (probably a hundred points or so). By the time a debt collector gets its account and begins to collect, they are going to use every means available to them to try and collect this debt (legal or illegal) and that includes threatening you with credit reports.
You cannot stop a creditor from putting correct information on your credit report. So, rather than worry about it, start making plans to recover from it. I hope this helps.
