Affinity Global (AffGlo) on Your Credit Report? Fight Back and Win

If you have a collections account listed on your credit report from Affinity Global, what does it mean? Are you the victim of a scam, do you owe the money, and how can you get it off? These are questions anyone is going to have if they check their credit report and there’s something negative and unexpected on it.

Why Is Affinity Global Calling Me?

You might also be dealing with ongoing calls from Affinity Global, claiming you owe a debt. Even if you haven’t checked your credit report yet, if you’re getting calls from this company, the chances are high that they’ve reported negative information to at least one of the main credit bureaus.

What do you do?

There are ways to get Affinity Global off your credit report, raise your credit score, and stop their phone calls. The best course of action is to avoid talking to Affinity Global until you’ve first spoken to a consumer protection attorney. 

Is Affinity Global a Legitimate Company?

If you’re getting calls from them, you’re probably wondering if you’re being scammed, but Affinity Global is a real company. Their U.S. offices include New York, Buffalo, Chicago, Denver, and Dallas. The company is also known as AffGlo.

Just because Affinity Global is a real company, it doesn’t automatically mean that you owe them a debt. There are numerous situations where people potentially have errors on their credit reports.

Why would you have an error? According to research, a significant number of people have errors like:

• Their name is similar to someone else’s, especially if that person lives in the same zip code as them. Then, their credit information can get mixed up. You might be getting calls about a debt that belongs to someone else entirely.
• The original creditor for an account misreported information like the owed balance, or maybe they said you were late on a payment when you weren’t.
• Old information might be reported to credit bureaus. For example, a debt could have been discharged in bankruptcy but still show up on your credit report, or an old debt might be reported as new. A debt could be reported as active, but you voluntarily closed your account, or information older than seven years could still be on your credit report. After seven years, most negative information is supposed to go off reports, except for chapter 7 bankruptcies, which take ten years.
• You could be reported as an account owner when you were just an authorized user.
• Many people have incorrect information on their credit reports because they’re victims of fraud and identity theft.

Who Does Affinity Global Collect For?

Affinity Global is a third-party debt collector. That means other companies come to them and hire them to collect their debts, so you aren’t going to be familiar with the company names the first time you see them. The industries Affinity Global collects for include:

• Auto
• Communications
• Financial services
• Insurance
• Retail

How Can I Get Affinity Global Off My Credit Report?

Typically, if you find a collections account on your credit report, one of two things is going on, and an attorney who specializes in the Fair Credit Reporting Act can help. 

If you have an account with a creditor and it gets very past due, the creditor might sell your debt to a company that does collections or have them collect it and pay them a fee for what they recover. When an account gets sold to a collection company like Affinity Global, the account from that company can be reported separately. 

You might end up having an original creditor account listed, and the collections account with Affinity Global.

There are only two ways that you can get Affinity Global or any other collections account off your credit report. Once something is in collections, you can wait seven years from your original date of delinquency, and then it should cycle off.

If you find out that you do owe Affinity Global, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act prohibits the company from using harassment when they contact you. Debt collectors are limited by the FDCPA, and they also can’t threaten you or intentionally try to be disruptive at inconvenient times.

If the information isn’t accurate, you can file a dispute about the information.

Regardless of whether you think the information is accurate, talk to an FCRA attorney first, to protect your rights. 

How to File a Dispute with Affinity Global

When you’re getting calls from Affinity Global and work with an FCRA attorney, they can contact the company on your behalf. The attorney can get more information on the debt and, if needed, take the steps to dispute it so it can be removed from your credit information. It’s your right under the FCRA to dispute some or all of a debt. The FCRA protects consumers as far as how their credit and financial information are reported, and maintained and also how this information is accessed. 

Affinity Global should investigate your dispute, which is, again, required under the FCRA. They are supposed to let you know their findings, and if they believe that it is an error or the result of identity theft or fraud, it should be removed from your credit report.

While that can seem easy enough, many consumers find out that debt collectors aren’t always compliant with the law and the steps they’re supposed to take. The debt collection company might not respond to you, or they might not do so in a timely way, so you’re left waiting with a credit score that’s lower than it should be if you don’t have legal help. 

Without a lawyer representing you, the debt collector might disagree with your dispute, or even if they acknowledge it, the negative information could still be on your credit report.

Get Affinity Global Off Your Credit Report

If you want Affinity Global off your credit report and you want to move forward without their phone calls or the effects on your credit score, contact Fair Credit. We’re a team of attorneys focusing on the FCRA, and we provide free case reviews.