I pulled my EXP report last night and UGHH.. it was ugly. I had one cc back in 97 that I didn't make a payment on in a year. The acct. went through 3 different CA's. I paid the acct. 2 years ago, the CA that I paid is not on the report. On my EXP report, each CA is listed for this one card. Each CA says the acct. is open. The original creditor has it marked as a charge-off. How can I fix this? I disputed wiht Exp on-line saying that the acct. was paid, which is true... Three bad tradelines for one damn CC. Something is not right here! By the way EQU. has NONE of this on my report.. I am scared to see TU....
Do validation letters. Do you have a copy of a payoff letter? Or did you just pay the bill? Unfortunately this is what a lot of people do. You may have a problem with the R9 from the original account but you should be able to get rid of the other two entries. A lesson to be learned here is never send money without a payoff/ settlement letter being signed and if you are going to offer 100% try to get the account listed as pad as agreed, deleted, or de-rated. Good luck.
I don't think I would start out telling them that the account is paid. They will just update it to paid and that will be almost as bad. If I were you, I'd send validation letters to the CA's that appear on your credit report, and also a modified "validation" request to the original creditor. If any of them can produce documentation of the account, then I would "go back through my files" and discover this was paid on such and such a date. At least this way, you have a chance on deletion versus "paid". L
Well... I already did do the on-line dispute and said it was paid.. so I guess that was a mistake. I paid the CA about two years ago and did not get a letter from them, I still have the returned check. You know the damn CA told me they'd send me a letter too and never did... I don't understand why the original account is a charge off???? I thought charge-offs were when the credtior gives up on ever finding you??? They found me alright.. they never gave up!!!
Lisamar378 Never trust CA's. They just want your money. One of the purposes of sending a CA a settlement letter is to create a legal contract. They get your cash and you, at a minimum, get a letter saying the account is paid if full. Hopefully you get the account listed as a positive or deleted. The original account was listed as a "charge off" because the original credit card company (bank) waited the required 180 days for payment, then wrote the account off to bad debt. Then they (the original credit card company) sold the debt to a CA. In you case, as time went by, the account was sold two more time. Your story points out an issue with debt negotiation. If you offer to pay off a credit card company before they sell the debt to a CA, you may have to pay a larger percentage of the original debt, but you have a much better chance of cleaning up your credit report.
I did the same thing when I first started out, disputed, stating it was paid, and then found this board, realized, "oh my god! I shouldn't have done that!" What you need to do is attack the CA for not reporting it correctly. I have done this successfully with ALL 4 of my paid collection accounts. (gotten them all deleted) Find your receipt or check that shows you paid it. Write a letter or fax a letter to the original CA stating that you recently pulled your credit report and was shocked to see that an item you paid with them from years ago is STILL being reported as unpaid, although it's paid and you have the receipt to prove it, then tell them that since they haven't been able to report it correctly for x amount of years and it is clearly THEIR responsibility as a furnisher of information to report it correctly that you demand they request immediate deletion of the item from the CRAs. Now here's the thing; don't tell them which CRAs have it. They cannot pull a hard inquiry on a paid item to find out, so they will send a deletion letter (UDF) for all reporting agencies they report to. Quote the FCRA. and ASK FOR A letter stating they have deleted the account, OR a copy of the UDF. It worked great on all of the items I had, except for one, and they did request it, (I have the UDF) but it has taken 2 months for the CRA to take it off.
