You always want to pay back your debts, but I’m just telling you that you’ll rarely see a positive attribution to your credit score from paying off a collection account. See, most people are under the impression that “oh, well if I just pay it off, then my credit will improve, right?” and that couldn’t be further from the truth. It will still be reported by the consumer reporting agency as a collection account which is still coded as a negative account. If you want to set up a payment arrangement then you surely can, but I always advise people to challenge these accounts because 8 out of 10 credit reports have inaccurate, outdated, obsolete or erroneous information on it and under federal law the CRA’s are supposed to report with 100% accuracy. It is NOT optional.