WANTED: Success Stories

I started building my credit a very long time ago. I have never had more than 1 late payment on my report, always lots of inquiries. I am up to over $150,000 in personal lines. I use "teaser rates" to leverage my credit exercises.

www.creditsense.com

 

Hey girliegirl,
I too start with Lexington, about six months ago....from your previous question...at first I thought they were the best thing since sliced bread...however, the last couple of months I've honestly felt them slacking...all I have left on my reports are 3 collections accounts...1 is for $100, 2 is for $400 and the third is for $900...I really feel that the are dragging out my case to make more money off of me so I have made a decision that this is their last month for me...they're is hope...my fico score when I started was 535-540, it is now 601...all though I have a couple more disputes I do feel optamistic and the only thing I regret was not doing this sooner.

This is what has been deleted

experian- 4 collection accounts, 1 late payment

equifax - 2 collection accounts, 1 late payment

trans union - 2 collection accounts

I have also managed to get multiple inquires deleted by writing directly to the source myself-lexington doesn't remove inquries.

Anyway, hope this helps out....good luck.

 

Hiya, girliegirl, there are SO many success stories on this board that it boggles the mind. I just did a search on the word "success" and came up with thousands of postings. Here's a brief audit for you of some SUPER success stories just posted since November 1. (These are in order of recency -- newest first.) I think these are some super-encouraging stories.

Doc

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marci's success:
http://consumers.creditnet.com/straighttalk/board/showthread.php?s=&postid=116229

IndyGreg's success:
http://consumers.creditnet.com/straighttalk/board/showthread.php?s=&postid=116104

Rina's success:
http://consumers.creditnet.com/straighttalk/board/showthread.php?s=&postid=115815

samitra's success:
http://consumers.creditnet.com/straighttalk/board/showthread.php?s=&postid=114308

Shirley's success:
http://consumers.creditnet.com/straighttalk/board/showthread.php?s=&postid=113462

dnsatt's success:
http://consumers.creditnet.com/straighttalk/board/showthread.php?s=&postid=113213

anesthesia's success:
http://consumers.creditnet.com/straighttalk/board/showthread.php?s=&postid=113047

roni's dental assistant's success:
http://consumers.creditnet.com/straighttalk/board/showthread.php?s=&postid=111762

debate re Lexington successes:
(also search the board for keywords "Lexington success")
http://consumers.creditnet.com/straighttalk/board/showthread.php?s=&postid=111945
http://consumers.creditnet.com/straighttalk/board/showthread.php?s=&postid=107209

roni's success:
http://consumers.creditnet.com/straighttalk/board/showthread.php?s=&postid=110801

KHM's success:
http://consumers.creditnet.com/straighttalk/board/showthread.php?s=&postid=107946

dogman's success:
http://consumers.creditnet.com/straighttalk/board/showthread.php?s=&postid=105541

cmbrady's success:
http://consumers.creditnet.com/straighttalk/board/showthread.php?s=&postid=105263

Cyprigirl's success:
http://consumers.creditnet.com/straighttalk/board/showthread.php?s=&postid=105170

soup's success (used Lexington):
http://consumers.creditnet.com/straighttalk/board/showthread.php?s=&postid=103631

 

listen girl,

I don't qualify for a success story yet, as I am still in 500 club scorewise, however, in less than two months i have gotten three collections deleted from my husbands account and three from my account. My score on tu jumped 35 pts! so if you need some encouragement, you are in the right place. I made a personal decision to try it myself.... but however you do it, post your success here also.

 

PsychDoc,

That was a really nice list you put together. I read through all the success stories and really enjoyed them, particularly Dogman's.


Girliegirl,

Just read and ask questions, and over time you'll learn how to get your credit report cleaned. In my own case, I did everything on my own and I worked directly with the creditors and then attacked the CRAs after the creditors agreed *in writing* to delete the information. Here are some CO and collection examples:

Associates paid CO: called their credit bureau unit, and simply asked if they'd consider removing it since I paid it, she said sure, just fax in your social and card account number. It was gone in two weeks.


Texaco paid CO: called their credit bureau unit, told them I disagreed with the CO notation since I paid it off when it was a collection account, demanded the payment history and exact date it was CO'd. I was willing for it to be changed to a paid collection. She told me it was my responsibility to provide payment history, I said "no, that burden is on the company". She called back, said they couldn't find my complete payment history in the microfiche archives and offered to delete it since she couldn't verify that it was supposed to be a CO. Gone in 2 months.

Citibank paid CO: first, got approved for a silver AA card after I begged a supervisor to approve me in spite of the paid CO. Two months later, I wrote their Executive Office via PlanetFeedback.Com, told them that I was approved for a new Citi card - sincerely appreciated their renewed trust in me and asked if they would do me a courtesy of giving me a fresh credit report start by removing the paid CO notation. Got a call back the next day agreeing to it, and it was gone in one week.

Chevron paid collection: I called the credit bureau unit, asked if they'd remove it, they said it was already purged from their database (4 years old) and for me to go ahead and dispute it since it could not be verified. I did, it was gone in 2 weeks.


By going through the creditors, I will never have to worry about this popping up on my reports again. And I can look myself in the mirror b/c I did it with integrity.

It WILL happen girliegirl, and all the info you'll ever need is here on this board for free.

Best wishes,

 

Marci,

Your story inspired me, since I too have almost exclusively Paid Chargeoffs/ Paid Collections shwowing on my credit reports. While not stopping my other efforts (Validation/ Estoppel, etc), I am officially opening a new front in my personal war. As of today.

Thanks!

BTW, girliegirl, get optimistic. The damage can be undone. I've already had over forty negatives removed from my CR's and my wife's, mostly by asking them to provide some verification of accounts through CRA disputes. I have, as best I could, stuck with challenging specifics and asking for verification, rather than saying "not mine". One of the CRA's, EX or EQ, I forget now which one, really doesn't give you the option of giving a detailed explanation of your dispute, when you dispute online, and so I ended up checking that box. Don't know th results, as this was just last week as part of the CHOD festivities.

 

You're welcome. I hope things work for you.

 

Hi... I'm a newbie here too. I've just began the long process of cleaning up my credit report and started 6 mos. ago to take control of my financial situation. I'm hoping in a few months/maybe a couple of years...have an excellent credit report so I can get a great mortgage on my first house. I have five active credit cards with 50%-75% outstanding balances on them, 4 college loans, and a car loan. I've so far closed out all other paid-in-full store cards and credit cards....a whopping 10! I found one DEROG on my report. MAN, I was in shock on that one, but I wrote to the credit card place directly and stated my case (I posted it on this site) and they wrote me back saying they will remove it. ) I have one more year left to pay on my student loans...YIPPEEEEE! After those are paid off that money is going straight to paying on my credit card balances. One step at a time and perhaps I will be able to breath more freely in the future.

The best advice I can hand out here is ..... take your financial matters by the horns, set up a budget for your needs and stick to it!, refrain from extra spending, refrain from putting inquires on your report, and clean up that credit report. It all takes time but don't lose that hope. All good things are worth waiting for! Remember there are millions of us out here in the world in the same boat as you are/or a boat nearby.

BTW....For all of you that have children..... I can't stress it enough that you NEED to educate your kids on financial situations as soon as they can understand it. The earlier they understand it the better off thier futures will be. Just think of where our financial matters would be if our parents had educated us on finances.

 

My parents educated me, I just wish I had listened. They do know it all!!!

 

Here's a request related to this thread a few weeks later.

Let's see some more positive testimonials from those who have successfully utilized validation and estoppel letters. What did you do? Did the creditor simply remove or revise the tradeline without further action? Has anyone had success getting the CRAs to remove tradelines when creditors don't respond to the letters?

Doc

 

As many of you know, I did a lot of early on stuff myself, mostly disputing, although I did send one Validation Letter to a collector, who promptly responded by sending me a 100 page computer pirintout, lol. Still working on them. Do to time constraints, and my own lack of confidence combined with a sense of urgency to get it right the first time, I signed up a couple of months ago with Bill Bauer. Before I go further, I want to make clear it is not my intent to make a plug for Bill. Merely to report back my results, thus far, as I have promised several members I would do. Bill can do, and is not shy about doing his own promotions. Since his approach, while fairly unique, relies heavily on his own versions of validation and estoppel letters, this seemed like a good place to report back in.

I won't say it's been overwhelmingly successful so far, and as Doc and others have reported, Customer Service is definitely a work in progress at Creditwrench. But there definitely has been successes, and they come on accounts that resisted my first attempts (multiple CRA verificatons/ disputes) at removals. Two weeks ago I got a notice telling me that a paid collection fom my wife's Equifax report and another from my Equifax. Also, last week, I got Citibank to delete an old Paid Charge off form my Experian.

Last week I got a hilarious phone call from a collector. They had already received the Bb version of the Validation Letter, and the BB version of the estoppel 30 days later. I was getting ready to send out the next in his series of letters, and this clod calls me. He sounds like he's kind of exasperated with this whole thing already, and he says "Look, this account is paid, and we're reporting it paid, and we're going to report it again as paid." I said, "You do whatever you think you need to do, but from now on, as I wrote in both letters, I expect all correspondence with you to be in writing. Goodbye." As I was hanging up the phone, I heard him yelling, "WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME??!!!" Click. Man, that just warmed my heart. All that for an $80 Paid Collection. I decided to let that one stew for a couple of weeks before sending the next letter. Late in the afternoon on Christmas Eve, the mail finally arrived. In it, there was a letter from this collector that said, "Please be advised that the above referenced account has been canceled. The credit bureaus will be instructed to remove this account from your credit file if we have reported it to any. This usually takes 3 to 4 weeks, in the interim if I can be of assisitance please do not hesitate to call."

Seperate from this effort I also talked Cap1 (via planetfeedback) into changing our two paid chargeoffs to paid collections. Still working on them with the series of letters, but that's already an improvement, and I'm sure it was crucial in getting two new CitiAA cards last week that were then combined bac onto my Citi Classic MC, which was then converted to Platinum with a $14,500 CL.

Now that's a Holly Jolly Christmas. Considering the other news I got Christmas Eve, it was just what I needed.

The other news, BTW, being that Quixote will be unemployed in a few weeks. It turns out my company is not going out of business just yet, but is gutting itself to the point where it might as well. Still some death throes to go through, but without me and a bunch of others around. I've sent out over 40 resumes so far. My goal is 100. I should be there by tomorrow.

I will be the first to say that, beyond the initial succeses from disputing, every success I've had has come from what I've learned on this board. Much of it vicariously, like the Cap1/ PFB thing, but some of it, like the whole Citibank switcheroo thing, I was being led by the hand alll the way through the process by Marci, Doc, and Breeze. I would have never though of any of that stuff on my own. Even the successes I've had with the ever-cantankerous Bill Bauer, well, for better or worse (depending on who you ask), I ran across him here, and so I owe those successes to this board also. I'll continue to report as we progress. One interesting note (especially for you MikeB, and Bkev, if you're watching somewhere) I got a note from Bill about a week ago saying that essentially there's not much more that can be done besides finishing up a few things we started (since I'm dealing primarily with Paid Charge Offs or Paid Collections, which are not his forte), there's no sense in continuing to pay. I put this out there merely for info, not to start an argument, because frankly, I'm not gonna argue about it. That's what happened.

Gratefully,

Tom

 

3 years ago this month, discharged bk. Never wanted to see a credit card again in my life.

3 months later I almost got stranded in the San Francisco airport because I had trouble renting a car with a debit card. Cried in the bathroom and found my spine again. Bit the bullet and investigated credit rebuilding. Read literally every book I could on it.

Found this board and yahoo. Found validation letters and guts. Ordered my reports and was pleasantly surprised that many accounts hadn't found their way back onto my credit reports during the bk. started disputing and validating.

Now it's Sept 99: bit the bullet and got Providian Visa (59 fee for unsecured 500 card)
Oct 99 Capital One marble MC (59 fee) but also unsecured
Jan 00 Household Mc (yes, 79 annual fee, 300 limit, unsecured).

Use them voraciously, but give little/ no interest (paid Providian before cycle closes to minimize interest).

Started aggressively calling all to up limits and better terms.

June 00 Got offer from Cap1 for a 500 visa, same terms. tood it. Nov 00 Same with Providian Mc. took it.

Was going to combine Cap1s but negotiated instead.

Creditors made mistakes with my old accounts and reporting. Got almost off within 1 year. Only really left with bk in public record section.

jan01 thought I'd broken middle prime with Nextcard (ok, stop laughing) but it was my first % intro rate in years. Also got 3rd Cap1 card, Getsmart card (not great terms but better starting limit)

and in april, TARGET (I love my Target card).

Worked the cap1s to prime terms, Plat limits. Only really use them. Have now 24 mos in the system of good pays... almost prime scores and I can qualify for a car or mortgage if I want to...

but instead I'm saving and having fun. Got 0% intro on last Cap1 but with baby limit... worked it up.

It can be done... and completely rebuilt in 2 years or less I was actually pretty happy after 1 year of disputing and rebuilding. Let it be a hobby, a game, a learning experience and it'll go faster )))

 

before this board I had no idea what a credit score was. My credit report was wrecked due to a very sick child and no sort of health insurance.Had our truck repossesed and had 2 credit cards that I had defaulted on.Stayed home 7 years to care for my sick child so by the time I got back to work my credit report just needed a little work, and thats where this board came in.With the help of everyone here I totally cleaned up my report-judgements were removed and all my paid off negatives -gone! they still had 3 or 4 years left on my report. I started with Providian-250.00 now at 6000.00 per card (have visa and mastercard with them)I have 3 citi cards a Cap one,Target and many more.Most are in the sock drawer and come out once in a while to be used just to keep active.I am going to take the plunge next week and apply for a loan to buy the house I am in. I am a single mom with 3 children and now know there are alot of programs out there to help me achieve this goal--I just want to say thanks to all of you and I would nominate everyone as credit person of the year!! Everyone's input has helped me in every way possible!!

 

I used Lex, they are only helpful to a certain extent.

Here is something i posted from August:
I have been with Lexington Law Firm since Mid March of this year. Here are my results to date:

With Experian: They are disputing 6 accounts including Discover, CB, ANBCC (all three closed account on me when I start fooling with Ameridebt), FB store credit card with two latenesses, OSI cell phone collection account and PECO the energy company that lists only on my experian report that they closed the account on me.

First, I hate Experian, This is definitely my worst report. The PECO account was deleted. The FB account latenesses were deleted. Three of the 6 discover latenesses were deleted. Everything else is supposedly in progress. Last time I checked my score was a 597, this was about 10 days ago. 12 hard inquiries (past two years, 3 in the past 6 months) and 15 soft.


TU: OSI, Discover, ANBCC, FB and CB. OSI was deleted, CB was deleted, three lates from Discover were dropped, one FB lateness was deleted. The collection has been deleted, the CB account was deleted, three lateness were dropped from my DF account that had 6 latenesses. My FB account went from 2 latenesses to 1 and the rest are listed as in progress work. I never got a real score for TU, just the worthnotknowing.com score of 10. 10 hard inquiries (4 in the past 6 months), 20 soft

Equifax: Same five accounts as in TU, but DF has been deleted, the collection was deleted, FB deleted one late, the energy account was deleted (donâ??t know why it was not negative on this report). 1 hard inquiry (1 in past six months) in the past two years, 33 soft. Score of 665.

These are my Round 2 results as of middle of July.


Of course it hasnâ??t came without its frustration as a lot was going on with the company having payment problems with me which were not my fault and problems with people not returning phone calls or emails. Everyone has their stories about the company, some good and some bad. I guess it depends on how bad you want credit repair, how far you will go to get it and what you can and cant deal with in order to get there.

Today is August 9. They were to automatically withdraw their monthly payment of 30 or 35 dollars out of my account whatever it is on August 3. I have had so many problems with them in this department. A lot of people are probably reading this saying, well you should be happy, that more money in your account since you didnâ??t pay them, but this is the entire source of my frustration with this company. In two weeks, I will get an email from someone saying my draft did not go though, but in reality the money has been there the entire time. The email will also say I know owe 15.00 extra dollars for returned draft. When I entered this program, I entered all my information correctly into their online form. Then I got this email and they told me to call, so I finally get a live person and they had reversed my routing and account number, so we fix it, everything is fine right? No, this happened two more times, the second for the same reason as the first. The third time this happenedâ?¦..guess what I received an email from someone else saying I was being dropped from the program for non payment! So I am pissed! I came here to the boards and voiced my anger and the next day I received a phone call at work from someone who asked if I really want to drop the program and the proceeded to tell me for some reason there was a mastercard listed under my name! I donâ??t own a mastercard! He probably should not have told me this because this tells me that this company needs to be more organized. There arenâ??t a lot of businesses where a customers phone call should go unanswered for 3 days, but mine did. And my emails, werenâ??t answered either. Don't email me and tell me to please feel free to contact you if you wont be willing to hear what I have to say.

This is just something to think about when it comes to Lexington. Some people love them, some people hate them, but I am just in the middle.


I dropped them at the very end of august and signed up with creditexperts 30 day free trial to try to get some stuff off of my report and i guess I am just going to work on this stuff by my self for a little while.