I'm back on this board after years of sticking my head in the sand. I admit, I do have issues with controlling my finances, and I would rather pretend a situation didn't exist by ignoring it rather than facing the music. The good news is that most of the delinquent items on my credit report from my college mishaps have fallen off. The bad news is that the gazillion tiny accounts I opened (and failed to pay) in 2007 are going to haunt me, and I'm finally ready to put in the time and effort to work on this. As it stands, I have 14 negative accounts and my Experian Score is 542. I've listed below the items and my plan of attack/comments - any insight would be extremely helpful. Capital One - Balance - 671, Charged off in 6/2010 - I would like to see if they would "re-age" the account CCS/Bryant State Bank $548 - Debt Validation, Dispute, Pay for Delete CCS/Bryant State Bank $548 - see above - not sure if this is a duplicate account - very weird CCS/Cortrust Bank - $480 - charged off in April 2010, DV, Dispute, PFD Credit One Bank - $695 charged off in August 2009, DV, Dispute, PFD Credit Systems International (CA for old Utility) - $559, DV, Dispute, PFD 1st Premier Bank - $476, charged off in March 2010, DV, Dispute, PFD HSBC/Orchard - $535 charged off in Jun 2010, DV, Dispute, PFD Jefforson Capital Systems (from Salute Card) - $880 past due as of Dec 2010 DV, Dispute, PFD LVNV Funding LLC, $882 past due collection - DV, Dispute, PFD National Credit Solutions - Columbia House DVD $132 - Disputing this online currently - no knowledge of this account Plains Commerce Bank - $969 - purchased by another lender - DV, Dispute, PFD Salute/Urban Trust - shows "Paid/Closed" - past due as of Jul 2009 - Currently Disputing Should the Salute card and the CA both be shown on there at the same time? I am going to see if Capital One will "re-age" my account if I show a good-will effort to pay. The other cards, my approach is to DV, then dispute, and then try a PFD if those don't work. My goal is just to clean them up off my report and get my credit score higher. Does anyone have any thoughts on my approach? Has anyone ever dealt with any of these creditors before? Thanks!!!
- bump - anyone out there? I am reading conflicting information that the Debt Validation doesn't really work. I did call Capital One yesterday, and they referred me to the agency who is handling the account, and said it no longer belonged to them and there was nothing they could do. I call the agency who refers me to the lawyer's office who is now handling the account. Any ideas? Should I reach out to them? I really just want to improve my score and get as many negative tradelines as I can off. Thanks!
Debt validation does work in certain cases. Let me ask in your plan to work on these negative accounts, you said you wanted Cap One to re-age an account. Why? Anyway, sounds like Cap One has sold the account to a CA and they have assigned or sold it to a law office. By the way the law office is now acting as a CA and is to held responsible for FDCPA laws which govern collection agencies.
Thanks! I read an article from bankrate that stated creditors could 're-age' the account, meaning - putting it back in good standing with the promise to pay based on record of complete payments towards the debt for at least three months. I guess I lost my chance once it was charged off. This is a lot of work - I guess I just need to be patient with it. By the way - I'm confused - pulled my report from freecreditreport.com and paid a dollar for the free score - my "Plus" score came up to 542. I ran my CR on Transunion and paid for the complete monitoring kit and it at gave me the following scores: Experian: 637 TransUnion: 639 Equifax: 617 So what gives? They rank my Exp and TU scores in the 10th percentile and the EQ in the 7th percentile.... I don't know which one to trust ? Confused.
Tonight (at 9:45 pm), I received a call from Vision Financial - a "financial institution" that alleges that they now own the Salute card). The individual I spoke with was very abrupt. I asked the usual questions such as who are you, why are you calling me, etc. She gave me her standard answers, and then I told her that she was calling me after 9 PM which was in violation of the FDCPA. She became upset and told me that based off my phone number I was in the appropriate time zone (my mobile number is from the south, so CST). I asked her to cease and desist with the calls and if they had any communication, please send via mail. She stated that they did send me correspondence. I asked to what address, and she stated my address (last apt, I moved a few months ago). I then asked her - "well then, you can see that I now live in the North East, but you still called me after 9 PM?" She became belligerent and stated that it was based off the area code for my phone number. She asked me for an updated address - I told her that my address was up to date with all three credit reporting agencies, so if she needed further information, to please pull that data and contact me that way. I told her I didn't know who she was or what she was talking about, and refused to further provide her with my personal details. She then stated that they pulled my report on 12/9 and she wasn't going to do it again. I reiterated that if they needed to send me something, that was where she could get my address. The call didn't end on a positive note. She was upset and hung up on me, but not before telling me she would pull my report again so they could have an updated address. Thoughts? Once I receive a letter, I plan on asking for debt verification and going from there.
Bump - is my thinking sound? Does anyone have any thoughts on my approach? Also - is there any way I can use the FDCPA violation (by contacting me after 9 PM) as leverage in any discussions with them?
None of these scores really mean anything because they're not FICO scores. We like to call the scores you're referencing FAKOs, as they're just generated by the credit bureaus using their own credit-scoring models. I wouldn't pay much attention to them at all. If you really want to know what your actual credit scores are, pull your FICO scores.
The DV route sounds like a good plan to me. Protect your rights under the FDCPA and make them prove they have the right to collect this debt before moving forward. Oh, and there's probably not much you can do about them calling too late this one time. All they could really reference was your area code, so it sounds like they were actually trying to comply based off the information they had available.
