I have an old charged off account from '97 that I need to pay to apply for my mortgage. I tried calling Citibank several times to get a different rep to negotiate a settlement and/or better rating. The first lady told me pay $900 (I owe $1000) and the neg. info stands. The second lady said "that's what she told you. We don't second guess nobody". (Nice grammar). Since I'm on a timeline here, I just paid it to get it out of the way, but man, were they intimidating....I'm no good at negotiating as you can tell. On another note, it pays to be persistent if you can stand it. After I paid this, I called Equifax to dispute the balance since they had already verified that it belonged to me. I got three different ladies that told me I'd have to send a letter from the company since I just had it investigated. The fourth lady put it in dispute for me . I didn't want to wait around for Citibank to update to the CRA so hopefully this will speed things up for me.
