Parking Debts on Credit Reports

No parking

Junk debt collectors sometimes will “park” a debt on your credit report. This means that the debt collector will report negative information about you to credit reporting agencies but take no other action to collect the debt. The collector then sits and waits for you to discover the negative information in connection with some important event in your life such as buying a home or applying for a job. At this point, your time for dealing with the debt will be short but the need to deal with it great. The debt collector can use the negative information and the time restraints as leverage to coerce payment from you, regardless of whether you actually owe the debt or the amount claimed. When a debt collector does this, it sometimes reports “new” account activity that re-ages the debt. Parking a debt most likely violates both the Fair Credit Reporting Act and the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.