Dear Ontrack

Your best leverage occurs BEFORE the account is paid off or settled. Generally, you can negotiate with them to include REMOVAL of the trade line as a condition of the agreement - make sur eyou get it in writing.

The law doesn't require creditors to report - it only requires them to report ACCURATE information IF they choose to report it.

But once you're paid up and you have no obligation left, creditors have no consideration, so they have no reason to spend time and energy helping you by choosing to NOT report something.

Accurate, negative information remains on your credit history for ~7 years.

You can write all the letters you want, and you can dispute the debts with the CRAs, but there's no "magic letter" that guarantees that a creditor or a CRA will knowingly or willingly remove accurate information from your credit history, negative or positive.

DOES it happen? CAN it happen? MIGHT a dispute of an accurate negative account result in the removal of that account from your credit history? Perhaps.

Possible? Yes.
Probable? No.

If people could just write "magic letters" to change the past, what purpose would the CRAs serve? None.

Potential creditors would not be able to rely upon your "credit history" being an accurate reflection and represenation of your actual debt repayment actions.

 

All you can do is try; here are a few suggestions:

1) Review all the tradelines on your reports for any errors, and dispute directly with the CRAs.

2) You can try a "Goodwill Letter" to the Collection Agency/Creditor, requesting removal. You will need to find a "motivating" reason for them to remove though.

3) Try the "1-2 Punch" approach. Search the forum for the definitions and process. In basketball, we would call this approach "drawing the foul". In short, you are putting both the data furnisher, and the CRA through their legal requirements, and hoping they make an error, which you can use for deletion. The crux is a willingness to take legal action should any errors arise. This tactic is not for the faint of heart.

But, I suggest trying 1 & 2 above, and you still can request validation of the listed debts even though you have paid them.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

 

I agree with the above.

There may also be an opening to get negative accounts removed when there is an error either by the CA, or possibly originally by the OC. This is most effective when the account is still owned by the OC, as close to any alleged delinquency, and the OC has an interest in continued business goodwill.

Or if there is a violation of law, such as FCBA when an OC CC company has failed to properly or timely bill, or with medical providers where there may be violations of insurance contracts or mess-ups in claims submission.

Another possibility to keep in mind is where a CA has already been caught in illegal practices such as misreporting, including re-aging, is under an agreement to comply with the law, and is subject to auditing for that compliance, and does not want to run the risk of further trouble. An example is NCO.