Hi, I have some old charge offs on my credit reports from Providian, MBNA and CapOne. These were all eventually paid in full (stupid) but they still linger on my reports. Does anyone have a solution for getting rid of them. They are, on average, three years old. Thanks, Jim PS: I am up about 100 pts (560-660) due to the help of people on this board. Many thanks!
If the credit reports' comments are "Paid in Full" don't worry about them. That is a positive entry, just like "Paid on Time'. If the words do not appear. dispute the entry with the credit reporting agencies and send them any and all information proving that they were indeed paid in full. They will contact the creditors - who, if they're not crooks, will verify it and correct the information.
Actually, the accounts will still count as Charge Offs, jus because they are "Paid In Full", and even correctly reported, this is not a "positive". It is not the same as "Paid On Time". The best first move is to dispute, and hope for the best.
Absolutely correct. The paid charge off will show in the negative section. Sometimes it hurts your score more than the old chargeoff did.
Agreed. With any luck, since the debts were paid in full, the companies have either destroyed or moved to some storage factility anything they would need to validate. The best case would be since it's paid in full, they don't care anymore and won't even bother responding. I always dispute as "not my account."
There isn't any rationale in that from our viewpoint. As consumers we tend to think that we should be rewarded for doing the right thing but unfortunately our viewpoint is not what counts with the lenders and the credit reporters. What we fail to understand is that the thinking of the credit bureaus is much like the rationale that goes into producing the evening news on TV. Nobody would listen to the news if there was nothing outrageous or scandalous being reported. People don't listen to the news to learn that Aunt Goldie's garden club met yesterday and a great discussion was held about the price of gasoline these days. They listen to the news to learn about political mudslinging, murder, robbery, rape and what burned to the ground that day. They want to learn how many of our troops were killed in Iraq, not how many boy scouts went on the local camping trip. Lenders are not interested in learning about the fact that you finally paid what you owe. What they want to know is whether or not you had to be forced to pay up by some debt collector. And of course the debt collectors want to get the most reports into the greatest number of credit reports possible because that is free or nearly free advertising for them. If lenders pull a lot of credit reports and see that Allied Scumbags Collection Agency shows up time after time as having collected an account that lender is likely to give them a call instead of the bottom feeder they are currently using who never seems to get enough collected. In reality it is nothing more than another way of spamming the credit bureaus to get more business.
"Originally Posted by Hedwig Absolutely correct. The paid charge off will show in the negative section. Sometimes it hurts your score more than the old chargeoff did." The point here is that sometimes the payment is recorded as an activity that makes the account look newer or later than it really is, which can drop your credit score. The rationale in paying a debt, and it not helping your credit score is hard to accept at face value. But what the scoring system evaluates is the probability of you defaulting on a debt. The fact that you did default (with a Charged Off account) is all that counts in the scoring models.
A paid charge off is no betters score wise than a unpaid one.It would look better on a manual review. As advised above dispute the trade lines,but I would not use not mine as I consider that a wasted dispute. Be specific in your disputes to lessen your chances of being labeled frivolous.
