the settlement offer came from TD Visa, not a collector. I don't know any collectors that nice haha... She faxed me the offer and i'll go directly to my local TD bank to pay it next week. She told me to call back then to request the release letter etc...

my husband and I have another debt that went to collections (while we were making payments, nice eh?) and the collector was the infamous natale law office, long story short, they messed up and we have not heard anything on this debt in a year. I called the creditor today (wells fargo) and because they sold it to Arrow they won't let me pay them directly. I called Arrow who then told me to call back in 2 days and they will have assigned an agency to my debt (i thought Arrow was an agency?) They agreed not to send it back to natale thankfully. The remaining balance is 1888.57, original loan was 4000.00, should I make a settlement offer? If so what is fair?

At this point no, your credit is already trashed so settling will only help make it better.

Make sure you get the offer in writing before you pay and everything in the offer is correct. Collection agencies are terrible for taking money for settlements and the difference getting assigned elsewhere... make sure you line up all your ducks on this one to keep the offer binding on them.

My credit is already shot but does debt settlement look worse on a report than just slowly paying off the creditor? I had an acct with TD Visa a few years ago, screwed up etc, they sent me to collections (CBV). I pretty much refuse to deal with collection agencies so instead I opted to make small (50.00) monthly payments directly to TD. Today I received another (this is the 5th) "final notice" from CBV with a different debt amount etc that before so I called TD. The woman I spoke to was very nice to me and did not treat me like a deadbeat piece of trash which was refreshing (haha). Anyways, she offered me a settlement of 375.00 (balance owing according to her is 1497.71). 375.00 is a good deal i think however what will cause further damage to my report? the settlement or sitting in collections while i slowly but surely pay my creditor the full amount?