How to Remove Hunter Warfield from Your Credit Report
If Hunter Warfield, Inc., has contacted you about an unpaid bill or appeared on your credit report, you probably have an old debt. It’s likely that the debt collection company bought the old debt from your original creditor. Alternatively, Hunter Warfield could have received your name and contact information by mistake when it bought a bundle of old accounts from an apartment complex you once lived in. Either way, this Florida-based debt collector now wants you to pay.
A collections account can wreak havoc on your credit, remaining on your credit report and damaging your credit score for up to seven years. Dealing with debt collectors not only disrupts your financial plans, but it also adds a lot of stress to day-to-day life. Below, you'll find our guide will walk you through how to stop collections calls, remove Hunter Warfield from your credit report and start to get your credit score back on track.
What is Hunter Warfield?
Hunter Warfield is a debt collection company. While some companies in that industry buy a mix of accounts, including medical debt and credit card debt, Hunter Warfield is focused primarily on property management debt. That means the company recovers money owed for past-due rent and related fees on behalf of landlords and property managers. The company also helps property owners manage evictions.
If Hunter Warfield has appeared on your credit report, you've likely already heard from one of its agents. The agency may appear as "hwarfield" on your credit report. Like many debt collection companies, Hunter Warfield has a reputation for being aggressive in trying to reach consumers and demand repayment.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has received more than 3,000 complaints about Hunter Warfield in the past three years. Some of the most common complaint categories include attempting to collect debts that are not owed (33% of complaints), failing to provide adequate debt notifications (14%), and inaccurately reporting information to credit bureaus (11%). About 4% of complaints accused the company of inappropriate communications tactics, including repeated phone calls. The Better Business Bureau (BBB) has received more than 1,900 complaints in the last three years. Many of these complaints also cite inaccurate debts and reporting, and failure to validate debts.
Tips for dealing with Hunter Warfield
Dealing with debt collectors can be intimidating, but you shouldn't ignore the issue. A collections account can pull down your credit score by as much as 100 points. Dealing with the accounts — and ideally removing the collections note from your credit report — will help you build back your credit faster.
Here's are seven tips to handle the situation:
- Know your rights
- Get everything in writing
- Validate the debt
- Dispute the debt
- Negotiate a settlement
- Seek professional help
Know your rights
The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) aims to protect consumers who are dealing with debt collectors regardless of how much they may owe or how overdue their debt may be. The federal law limits how a debt collection firm can talk to you and prohibits their employees from using deceptive or abusive tactics.
Specifically, debt collectors aren't legally allowed to:
- Contact you before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m. or call all you more than seven times per week per debt account
- Contact you at work if you ask them not to
- Contact friends or family members about your debt or disclose it publicly.
- Withhold details about the debt
- Lie about their identity or otherwise mislead you
- Continue to contact you (whether via phone, text, email, letter or social media) after you've sent them a written request to stop communications. (You can use a free “stop contact” letter template from the National Consumer Law Center to do so.)
- Harass or threaten you
If a debt collector is violating the law, you can take legal action against them. At a minimum, you should report the company with details of their actions to the CFPB and your state attorney general.
Get everything in writing
The idea of sending letters to a debt collection agency may sound inefficient and overly complicated. Nevertheless, you should try to limit your communications with Hunter Warfield to letters only (electronic letters via email work, too). The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has five sample letters for different situations that you can use.
Unless you have your agreement in writing, the debt collection agency can forget or choose to ignore it. Essentially, it’s your word against theirs. If your agent insists on making phone calls after you've asked them via writing to stop, inform the agency that it is violating the FDCPA and hang up.
Demand everything in writing from this point on, and keep every piece of communication you receive from Hunter Warfield. Every correspondence serves as evidence when you enter the negotiation process. These communications also serve as a tool to prevent additional harassment, as an agent will not break the law in a letter you could forward to the CFPB.
Validate the debt
There is no reason to pay a debt that isn't yours. That’s why you should make sure you actually owe the debt before paying it. You can do this through a validation process.
Ask for documentation
The first step in the process is to send a debt validation letter to Hunter Warfield. Debt collectors regularly obtain inaccurate debt information, and the FDCPA gives you the right to verify whether an alleged debt belongs to you. This ensures a third-party collection agency has accurate information.
Do not ignore Hunter Warfield when they first contact you. This will only make things worse. After Hunter Warfield first contacts you, you have only 30 days to send a debt validation letter. If you wait longer than that, they are not obliged to respond to you.
When you send the debt validation letter, request a return receipt so that you can verify the agency received your letter. After the company receives your request to validate the debt, it is supposed to cease all communications until it does so. You should hear back with documents and proof that the debt is yours, like a copy of the original billing statement. If Hunter Warfield can’t validate your debt — in other words, if the debt isn't yours or they don't have the correct information to prove it's yours — the company will have to dismiss it. They then must contact all three major credit bureaus within 30 days to have the debt removed.
Check if the statute of limitations on the debt has expired
While not every state has statutes of limitations for debt collections, many do. These laws prevent debt collectors from pursuing any debt that is over a certain age. States with these laws generally limit the collection period to three to six years.
Verify if the agency is licensed to collect debt in your state
Hunter Warfield advertises that it is licensed nationwide. This firm can almost certainly attempt to collect a debt regardless of the state you live in.
Dispute the debt
If the debt is not yours or the amount the company is trying to collect is inaccurate, you can dispute it. Disputing a debt means contacting each credit reporting bureau and following the steps each requires.
Provide your personal information when writing your dispute letters, including your name, address and phone number. Next, write a short summary about the debt you're disputing and include any supporting documents. The credit reporting bureaus have a legal duty to investigate every debt a consumer disputes.
You can get Hunter Warfield removed from credit if you win the dispute.
Credit reporting bureau contact
You can contact each bureau by phone or mail. All three have options to either submit a dispute letter online or mail a hard copy. If you go for the second option, the best option is mail it through certified mail. Here is the contact information for the three main bureaus:
Equifax
You can reach them by phone at 1-888-378-4329 or mail your disputes to:
Equifax Information Services LLC
P.O. Box 740256
Atlanta, GA 30374-0256
Experian
You can reach them by phone at 1-888-397-3742 or mail your disputes to:
Experian
P.O. Box 4500
Allen, TX 75013
Transunion
You can reach them by phone at 1-800-916-8800 or mail your disputes to:
Transunion Consumer Solutions
P.O. Box 2000
Chester, PA 19016-2000
Negotiate a payment plan
If you do owe the debt and the collection agency has the documents to prove it, you still have a few options. First, establish how to pay the debt. Hunter Warfield accepts payments by check or credit card. The next step is negotiating a settlement with the agency.
You should ask first for a pay-for-delete settlement. In this case, the collection agency would agree to stop reporting your debt to the three major credit bureaus in exchange for your payment. Getting the debt removed will improve your credit score. But it's important to know that companies aren't required to agree to that and even if the debt collector does, the credit reporting agencies aren't required to delete accurate information about accounts that had a past-due period.
You should never offer to pay the full amount at first. Hunter Warfield does not volunteer this information, but it often accepts less than the full amount. Any amount you pay pads the company's bottom line.
Start by offering to pay half the debt in exchange for deletion. You can work from there to come up with an agreement that both parties will accept. Once you have both accepted the terms, you should request that Hunter Warfield provides the official agreement in writing. Do not make a single payment until you receive this agreement in the mail.
Once the agreement arrives, you can make your first payment to Hunter Warfield. After 30 days, check your credit report with all three major credit bureaus. If your report is still showing the debt as unpaid, contact Hunter Warfield and remind them of your agreement.
Seek professional help
The steps above could put your financial life on the mend within a couple of months. However, you'll have to be persistent, thorough and determined. When you have a job, a family and other everyday concerns, finding the time to write and mail letters and follow up with credit bureaus add a lot of stress.
If you'd rather not deal with Hunter Warfield directly, you could look for law firms with consumer protection and debt collection experience. You could also look into companies to repair credit. Credit repair companies won't do anything you couldn't do yourself, but they deal with revenue recovery firms every day and so they may be able to get you results faster than you could on your own.
Some credit repair companies offer free consultations, but if you choose to move forward, you'll have to pay a monthly fee plus a one-time setup fee. Monthly fees typically range from $50 to $150, depending on the company and the services offered.
Removing Hunter Warfield Debt FAQ
How do I contact Hunter Warfield?
Is Hunter Warfield a scam?
Having overdue debts can hurt your credit score, limiting your chances of being approved for loans in the future. A low credit score can also increase your car insurance rate in many states.
How did Hunter Warfield get my phone number?
Can Hunter Warfield Collections sue me?
Where can I complain about Hunter Warfield?
Editor's note: This story was originally published on July 14, 2020, on BetterCreditBlog.org. It has been updated multiple times since then, including in 2025, to feature current information about Hunter Warfield.
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