I've heard that collection agencies are not allowed to rereport stale accounts? Let me elaborate what my situation is.. I have several accounts with creditors that were charged off back in 5-8/97. The SOL of CA is 4 years, so the expiration is near approaching. However, Coldata, NCO, Cavalary Investments LLC have bought out these debts.. now they report them as 1/01 and 12/00, and to go away in 2007. I realize that this is against the law.. but what are the steps I can do to fight this? My plan is the following: 1. Dispute w/ CRA first as "not mine, innaccurate" to try and get it removed. Redispute if verified, and redispute again if verified. 2. At this point, hopefully the SOL will be satisfied and I can start writing to the collection agencies directly to have them prove to me that that debt is mine.. using the letters, where I require them to show my signature, proof, etc. and continue sending these until they remove the lines. Is this the correct process? My second question is regarding the original creditors.. I have many 30,60,90,120 day late pays and charge offs on my reports. Do I challenge these as: 1) no late pays, and no chargeoffs and hope the CRA cannot get these verified and then the account will be changed to good status? Or if they are not verified, will the lines simply be deleted? 2) if in the case it is deleted, isn't disputing this as "not mine" the same? Also, if these are back in 5/97, how much positive influence will this have on my score anyway?? My third and final question of this long email is regarding building credit. My goal is to have "gleaning credit" in 1 1/2 years. I hope this is sufficient time to reach my goal.. the positives I have on my report include: 1) Car Loan, All paid off on 9/00, 5 year loan with no late pays or nothing derogatory 2) AmEx Corporate Card, have had it for 1 year, no late pays, avg $4-5k balance per month I pay off fully each month 3) authorized user as a credit card (shows up on my CR), with no late pays, perfect record 4) student loans, financial aid, etc. totalling to $9k left now. I have been paying these for about 5 months with perfect pays, no lates, etc. My plan is to completely pay my student loans off by June 2001 ($9k). I will be able to do this with the money I make monthly.. however, I recall reading your msg that it is best to build and pay debt for 12 mos to build credit.. thus, my question: should I prolong the payments further? I desire to simply do away with the debt soI can become debt free.. but will it be better for me to prolong the debt and pay interest/payments? Is the positive record saying that the debt is completely paid off just as good or not? I also realize that my goals also come into play here so the answers to the questions I ask may vary.. well, briefly, these are my goals: I plan on purchasing a car in January 2002 - so getting a car loan.. and hopefully purchasing a house in December 2002. These dates are still a considerable way off, but I wanted to work on obtaining "gleaning credit" and paying off loans - and rebuilding at the same time.. is there any general advice you could give to be effective in building credit? I have many other items on my report (all negative, the worse being a settled judgement), but I believe I can take care of those based on what I have studied in the kit and the previous msgs.. so, these are the questions I am left with. I hope a few knowledgable people can help out w/ my questions.. thanks in advance for everything..
as far as the student loans, you can pay those off. They actually hit your report the day you took the loan out in school, so you have an extending rating history with that account already. I think you have a handle on how to dispute as well. good luck. roni