For a lot of people, collectors are like a monkey that they need to get off their backs.
This is especially true when you have someone disturbing your peace with phone calls everywhere you go simply because they want to you to pay up a debt they claim to have bought the right from an original creditor.
As their claim may hold true some of the time, you should check to be sure that you are dealing with the right people and not frauds who may pose as a collection agency in a bid to rip you off.
To be sure the debt buyer you are dealing with has the authority to request money from you, the Fair Credit Reporting Act empowers you to make a validation of their demands.
This law makes a provision for you to have control of the situation and you can do this by simply writing a validation letter and mailing it to the debt buyer.
The agency is required to make a validation of the debt they request payment for within 30 days of receiving your letter, else they must desist from making any contact with you.
This validation must happen within the first 30 days of the initial contact by the collector.
If they are not able to validate their authorization to request payment from you, or if the 30-day duration expires and they cease to make a conclusion of investigation, then you should proceed to writing a dispute letter to the credit bureau to delete the account from your report.
You can also challenge the rights of the agency to make collection within your state.
If they do not have an operational license for your state, then it is most likely they are violating the law.
You can get them to back off based on this particular ground.
Using either of these methods and consequently deleting collection accounts from your file, you will automatically raise your score.