My husband has an account in collection. We saw it on his credit report and I called the collection company to see what it was. Wow was that a mistake. I called the original creditor (I was able to get that out of them) and worked out a payment arrangement with the OC. The OC can't pull the debt back from the CA. But I did send the CA a Cease & Desist letter (I based it on the one under do it yourself on this website) saying that I was choosing to work with the original creditor. I have paid a little over half the debt, and should have it all paid off by the end of July.