I have a charge off account with Discover. They filed suit and recieved a judgement against me about 2 years ago. I have benn paying them through CCCS since( SOL is reset, I assume). The current balance on the account is about $3800. I sent a settlement letter to the lawyer for $1500, and removal of all derogratory information pertain to this account from my credit reports. I received a reply from the lawyer today, he offered to settle the debt for $2100, and there was no mention of the removal of derogratory items from my reports. I called him and offered to split the difference between our offers, and told him that I needed negatives removed from my reports. He seemed open to negotiating the $, but acted like I was the first person to ever ask him about removing items from my credit report. He said he would need to talk to his client(Discover) since he had no control over how anything was repoted. He said he would get back to me in a day or two. When he gets back to me, if he is unwilling/unable to budge on how this account is reported what should I do? How this account is reported is the most important thing to me( certainly more important then the $600 difference in offers). Shold I do an endrun around the lawyer and contact Discover directly? Should I talk to them by letter or phone? Pay the account and dispute at a later date (it is my valid account)? pay the account and send Discover a Goodwill letter? Thanks for the guidance, Jason
So you have a judgement against you, and in the end will have a paid judgement and a paid charge off showing once you've finished paying them off. And then to top that off, the 7 year clock won't start ticking until you've finished paying off the judgement. IMHO (and I'm no expert, just a human being) I say don't agree to pay off ANYTHING unless they agree to a deletion of the tradelines . . . here's the problem. Is the judgement showing on your credit report? They may easily be able to remove the Discover paid charge off from your credit report, but then after everything is said and done you still may have to work on having the judgement vacated, then dispute it to have it come off. Having the discover charge off no longer appearing on the credit report may help in vacating the judgement but it'll be definitly an uphill battle for anything. Just my opinion, and I'm REALLY sorry to bash your hopes and dreams. Here's praying that the lawyer comes back with at least some glimmer of hope for deletion of the tradeline. It's not like you're asking for it to be marked paid as agreed, which would be providing incorrect information to the CRA, which I can understand why most OC's won't agree to. Hope it works out, but you still may be stuck with having to get the judgement off yourself. ChrisB
Thanks for the reply. I may be niave here but the lawyer said that once the settlement was paid off the lein/judgement would be vacated and it will come off my credit report. Is this a lie or did I misunderstand him? Thanks, Jason
Re: Re: Chargeoff settlement questi I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not sure. If there was a stipulation in the judgement, or something signed that states that the judgement will be vacated and removed from record once the settlement was paid then it would probably fall off. I'm just going by the type of things I've read on this board, where people agree to payment plans, and finally pay it off, only to find a paid judgement on their credit report. Now the original creditor isn't going to fight you on a move to vacate the judgement if it's already been settled, so it might not be too difficult of a task either way. Now is this THEIR lawyer, or one you've hired? I don't mean to offend any CNet readers, but most lawyers are the skum of the earth and will tell you anything to get to the goal they have. I wouldn't trust his word, but if you get something in writing, at least you can force that to be enforced through a lawsuit threat so . . . Again, I'm just giving you my honest opinion, and I'm a little pessimistic so it may be somewhat of a worst case scenereo. Hopefully the lawyer will come back, discover will agree to delete, and you'll get it all to fall off your report. Best of luck! ChrisB
Re: Re: Chargeoff settlement question Get it in writing or better yet make them get it off before paying.
Re: Re: Chargeoff settlement question It's neither a lie nor a misunderstanding - it's misinformaion. The Judgement comes off record AT THE COURTHOUSE, meaning that the lien no longer shows as open, but it STAYS on yoyr CRA file, but shows as a piaid Judgement. Now.... if you could (a) get the lawyer to agree to a Motion to Vacate as part of the stipulation of settlement and (b) get Discover to agree to do NOTHING when you dispute the trade line, you might be able to get what you want. With the granted MOTION TO VACATE, the Court is saying there never was a judgement, so the CRA better remove it from their records or you have a FCRA suit against the CRA. If you dispute the Discover trade line and Discover does nothing to affirm it, then the trade line must come off, also FCRA.
