Honestly, this isn’t a “frequently” asked question, but it came to us once, and the customer’s decision not to pay the debt UNLESS it first showed up on the three major credit bureau reports was such a bad decision that the customer should seriously consider suing the person that have them such horrible advice. When you go to the doctor, for example, and you later get a bill for whatever insurance didn’t cover, does that show up on your credit report? Nope, not unless you don’t pay it and it ends up a a collection agency. NOT having something on your credit report doesn’t mean the debt is suddenly not real. It’s just as real. See the above question and answer specific to recent changes to reporting requirements by collection agencies and you’ll quickly realize that taking the advice of a fool is a sure way to create headaches and worse, higher interest rates for loans, higher insurance rates, credit limits being reduced or credit accounts being closed by creditors, credit denials, even lost employment opportunities, and all the other devastating consequences that can happen when you have a COLLECTION AGENCY debt on your credit reports. The consequences are real. Don’t take our word for it; research it and you’ll realize that the fact we 1) aren’t a collection agency and 2) do not report to credit bureaus are two beneficial factors you don’t usually get. But, as we told the customer that brought this question to us, if you choose not to pay, we’ll eventually send it to a collection agency, it will soon be on your credit reports, and THEN you can pay the bill that is now “real” based on bad advice from a non-educated source of information, and we won’t be able to do anything about the fact it is on your credit reports for seven years.