Closed border states are great for people who owe money to live on because many collection agencies can never call you or contact you in any way.

The exceptions to this are business accounts and if the collection agency trying to collect a debt from you is licensed in the same state you are in.

The way this works in your favor is that if the collection agency that is trying to collect a debt from you does not have a license in your state, they will not be able to put anything on your credit report. Let me explain why… The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and the Fair Credit Reporting Laws state that you must notify the debtor (which is you) in writing that they have 30 days to dispute the validity of a debt in writing or the debt will be presumed valid. Since a collection agency can’t contact you when you live in a closed border state, they can’t send it to you, and even if you weren’t in a closed border state when you made the debt, you can still eliminate it. .

To do this, you will need to dispute your bill. Let me get this straight up front: This doesn’t make the debt go away, but it does remove it from your credit report. If you live in a closed border state and you owe money to a collection agency that isn’t licensed in your state (most agencies aren’t licensed in multiple states, but some are), what you need to do is get the mailing address. from the collection agency that reports it to your credit report. Along with the address, you will need to obtain your account number, reference number, or file number. That is all the information you will ever need and you can get it in one very quick phone call, it will be fast and painless. Now that you have all of your account information, you’ll send them a written dispute letter. Now, in this dispute, you’ll want to specifically state that “if you can’t validate this debt, I want it removed from my credit report immediately.”

Now, the real beauty of being in a closed border state is that you can still contact the collection agency anytime you want about anything on your account and they can’t get back to you, even when you tell them to call you back, still by law they can’t call you. What you do is send the dispute letter to the collection agency with your demand that it be removed from your credit, then call them on the phone every other day just to check and see if they took it off your credit report. Or not.

Below is a list of all closed border states

Alaska

Arizona

Colorado

Connecticut

Delaware

Hawaii

Idaho

Mississippi

New Jersey

NY*

North Carolina

North Dakota

Maine

Maryland

Massachusetts

Minnesota

Oregon

Tennessee

Texas

Utah

Washington

West Virginia

*New York is not statewide, it is in Buffalo and New York City, you will need to check with your Attorney General to be absolutely sure.

-Don-