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How to Remove McCarthy Burgess and Wolff from Your Credit Report

By:
Money Staff
8 min read

If you see MB&W on your credit report, and it’s contacting you, it’s important to act quickly and remove any negative entries from your reports. A collection account on your report can significantly damage your credit score. While paying off the debt you owe to MB&W might seem like a simple solution, it won’t help to boost your score. This article will provide you with some strategic options.

What is MB&W?

If you’re not familiar with MB&W, seeing it on your credit report may raise some red flags. However, MB&W is a legitimate company. Originating in 1980, it has its headquarters in Bedford Heights, Ohio, and it pursues payment from debtors across the U.S.

Unlike service providers or banks that may appear on your credit report, MB&W is a debt collection agency. These agencies typically purchase debts from companies at discounted rates and proceed to hound consumers until they agree to make a payment.

According to its website, it offers businesses debt-related services, including:

The agency collects several types of debt, including credit cards, utility bills, student loans, medical bills and auto loans.

How does MB&W work?

If you fall behind on payments, businesses often turn to collection agencies to seek repayment by either selling them the debt outright or paying for their assistance. When this happens, a collection entry appears on your credit report, and the agency can call you repeatedly and send letters until you arrange payment. Collection entries, which can drop your score anywhere from a few points to more than 100, do long-term damage, as they can stay on your report for up to seven years, regardless of whether you make a payment. The good news is, you can get a debt collector off your credit report and stop them from harassing you using the strategies in this article.

3 ways to remove MB&W from your credit report

The following approaches will help you to put a stop to MB&W’s phone calls and harassing voicemails, remove it from your credit report and fix the damage done to your score:

1. Submit a debt validation letter

The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) requires debt collectors to validate any debts they’re attempting to collect. In fact, there are reports of recent class-action lawsuits in New York concerning MB&W and FDCPA violations. If you send MB&W a debt validation letter within 30 days of it contacting you for the first time, it has a legal obligation to provide documentation verifying the debt. If it can’t, it must remove the collection entry from your credit report and stop calling you.

It’s a good idea to use a credit monitoring service to stay on top of any changes to your report so you can react quickly when a new entry appears. Regardless of whether you owe the collection agency money, sending a debt validation letter is smart. Third-party debt collectors don’t always have the documentation they need to validate a debt, so you may get out of paying altogether.

2. Arrange a pay-for-delete agreement

If the 30-day deadline has passed, you can try to negotiate a pay-for-delete agreement. While logging into the MB&W website and paying your debt in full might seem like the right course of action, it won’t necessarily get the account off your credit report. Instead, you should ask MB&W to agree, in writing, to remove the collection entry in exchange for payment.

Debt collectors get a good deal on the debts they purchase, so they’ll often accept a negotiated repayment. This means you can put an end to the collection calls and get MB&W off your report while only paying a fraction of what you owe. Make sure all negotiations are via letters so that you have the terms of the agreement in writing if anything goes wrong.

When you arrange a pay-for-delete agreement, you can expect to see quick results. If the collection entry is still on your report after 30 days, follow up to ensure MB&W reports your payment to the credit bureaus.

3. Use a credit repair company

If you don’t want to deal with MB&W yourself, a credit repair company can help, and most companies will give you a free case evaluation. If confronting a collection agency is stressful, you feel like you’re in over your head or you simply don’t have the time to negotiate with collectors, consider hiring a credit repair company. These companies specialize in disputing claims and getting debt collectors off your report. They can also step in if a debt collector tries to garnish your wages or file a lawsuit.

The Credit People offers some of the most affordable credit repair services on the market and receives excellent customer reviews. Regardless of whether you choose to do it yourself or pay for help, you can easily get your score back on track.

MB&W contact information:

Mailing address:

26000 Cannon Road
Cleveland, OH 44146

Phone number: 888-584-3053
Website: www.mbandw.com

MB&W has an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau (BBB), but reviews show only a one-out-of-five customer satisfaction score. There are over 50 complaints against MB&W in 2021 on file with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) claiming FDCPA violations.

Dealing with MB&W

There are hundreds of customer complaints on file against MB&W. The BBB and CFPB provide an honest review of customers’ experiences with debt collectors. Like many debt collection agencies, MB&W receives complaints concerning inaccurate credit reporting, harassment and failing to provide debt validation.

Debt collectors are notorious for harassing clients with incessant phone calls. As a consumer, it’s important to understand how the FDCPA protects you. It governs the practices of debt collectors and prohibits actions, such as calling you at work or contacting your friends or family regarding your debt.

It also allows you to set the terms of your correspondence, so you can choose to communicate by mail only. This eliminates the annoying phone calls and allows you to document every interaction you have with a debt collection agency.

Update: This article has been updated to reflect the current number of CFPB complaints against MB&W. MB&W’s current contact information has been updated as well as their BBB rating.

Disclaimer: This story was originally published on August 25, 2020, on BetterCreditBlog.org. To find the most relevant information concerning collections or credit card inquiries, please visit: https://money.com/how-to-remove-collections-from-credit-report/ or https://money.com/get-items-removed-from-credit-report/

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