Hi I need some direction on how I would go about addressing my situation I lost my job about 8 months ago. All my credit cards were charged off and are now in collections. I currently have a job now but I cannot afford to pay large sums of money to the collections agencies. My credit score is shot. How would I go about getting my credit score up? How do I deal with collection agencies when trying to pay them off? I tried working with Apex. I sent them my credit reports. I heard from then once and no more. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Glad to hear you've been able to find some work again shameen. That must be a huge relief! Anyway, your questions are a bit vague, which is probably why you haven't received a lot of responses. The best advice I can offer based upon the info. you provided is to keep all your communication with the CAs in writing and keep detailed records of the entire process. Negotiate hard for complete deletions in return for payment. And if that's not possible, shoot for some kind of compromise. Remember, a "paid" collection is basically as damaging as an "unpaid" collection to your credit scores. Get any agreements with the CAs in writing as well. In the meantime, you may also want to see if a close relative or friend would be willing to add you as an AU to one of their credit card accounts in good standing, which should help strengthen your score a bit.
I agree with Josh (as usual). His plan is sound. With that said, I just wanted to state that while I don't know who you are, we typically don't accept clients with many unpaid recent charge-off's insofar as we feel that we can't do that much to help. In other words, we're not going to take your money if we don't think we can significantly help you. Please don't take it as a snub. We just don't take every applicant. In any event, it sounds like your on track now. I'd suggest just going over and over this board. You can do it yourself and I would be glad to help you with any question here and here, it's absolutely free.
Thanks Josh. I will do what you stated. It is a wonderful relief. Unfortunately. I don't have anyone I can ask.What type of info do u need? I'm thinking about working with a debt settlement company. Thoughts? Apex, It would have been nice if someone would've contacted me to state such.
When did you submit your reports? If you can PM me your name, I will find out why you weren't contacted as to why we couldn't help you.
shameen, why don't you start out by just asking a question about what's worrying you most right now? Have you even begun communicating with any of the CAs yet? There's no reason to think you can't try handling this on your own first. Besides, there are plenty of people here who will be willing to offer their free advice and insight, so you're not really alone in the process.
I'm beginning my journey. Where do I start? I haven't contacted any collection agencies. Do I write or call? Do I send money orders? Do I present them with a payment plan I can afford? Any assistance is greatly appreciated.
Have any of the CAs even contacted you yet? When they do, respond with a DV letter and keep all your communication in writing. Once you determine who you should rightfully pay to satisfy your debts, then you can begin to develop a strategy for negotiating payment - which you will always make using a money order or a cashiers check.
I certainly agree with Joshua. Start off with a good Debt validation letter. In my opinion (for whatever that's worth) a good debt validation letter is only about two or three paragraphs long and doesn't even say what account you are referring to. I just make a photocopy of the letter they sent me and staple it to my DV letter so they know what I'm talking about. If there is anything on the back of their initial contact letter I do a double sided copy so it really looks like I'm returning their letter to them. One paragraph says I dispute the debt and the other one says I want them to validate the debt. I send the DV letter certified mail return receipt requested. I tend to think anything else such as demanding they answer a list of questions is pure nonsense. I'm not interested in teaching them how smart I am. What I want to know is how smart they are so the less I say the better. I used to send them an estoppel letter 31 days after they got my debt validation letter but I stopped that nonsense too. Englehart vs. Gravens has absolutely nothing to do with debt collection or debt validation so using the infamous estoppel letter found on most message boards only helps prove how ignorant I am. I don't need to prove that since they probably figure I'm stupid to start off with. I now use another letter entirely that don't give them any information but rather just asks a simple question which is If I pay you all that you claim I owe will you report that fact to the credit bureaus?Nothing more than that. Keep it simple. That works no matter how they answer the question. Well, OK, but I can never get them to negotiate payment voluntarily. They never like my terms and conditions which is that the payment must be in one lump sum and they must sign a strict non-disclosure statement with a stiff penalty for any violation of it. I start off with a $10,000 penalty and they never seem to want to agree to that. Don't seem to mind $500 or so however. I also don't want them to pay me directly by check or money order. I want them to pay me by direct deposit to my corporate bank account. They can do that with a check if they want to, I don't care. One thing that really puzzles me is why they always come back trying to tell me that the creditor still has to be paid. The creditor has nothing to do with it. I always tell them to tell their customer that they will just have to find somebody else to do their collecting for them. Somebody competent to do their collecting for them. They seem to really hate that idea. (LOL) The methods I use are often referred to as informal bankruptcy. I'm seeing lots of references to informal bankruptcy on the net these days but almost all of the comments and articles about informal bankruptcy I see are written by dumb bankruptcy attorneys who try to tell people that informal bankruptcy amounts to nothing more than essentially digging a hole and pulling it in after you and that don't work. They claim that the real bankruptcy is the only way to go and people who read their articles need to contact them and hire them to do their bankruptcy for them. More spam advertising, of course but nothing intelligent. (LOL)
