Here's my info... Need a game plan

"Although incorrect items remain, I can no longer wait to have these items investigated. Immediately I would like to agree to pay off the items which have a balance of under $300, as long as the creditor agrees to remove the entire record from my reports. Later on I will be able to do the same with the larger items."

You might think it should be that simple, but it isn't. Short of being able and willing to sue, you don't get to choose how long any other party takes to act, or whether they act at all.

In particular, if you are dealing with reported debts that are inaccurate or not yours, you may cause yourself more problems by paying them than by challenging them. Credit reporting doesn't give you much credit for paying already delinquent bills, and the creditors or CAs that get a payment on an account that you might not owe will use that to justify the continued reporting of the accountn as a negative paid collection even if paid. Furthermore, you weaken your case by paying should you find you later have to sue.

If you actually have accounts that are either not owed, or not yours, you are better dealing with them agressively, since you know you don't have to bluff.

That is why the first questions are always:
1) Is this my debt? (This includes whether you have been misidentified, or there is id theft involved.)
2) Do I actually owe it?

If the answer to either is "No", you will come out ahead even if you spend the money you might use to pay a debt you don't owe, to instead dispute and if necessary sue.

In particular, in the case of medical debts, (2) should include making sure that all insurance claims have been filed and paid, and that appropriate adjustments required by contract between medical providers and insurers have been made. If the other party has not fulfilled their own contractual obligations, they have no business reporting you as a deatbeat.

 

The best way is whatever works.

If the reported information is accurate, they may have every right to both take your payment, and continue to report a collection account as paid.

If you can get them to take a pay for delete, fine. If they say they will, get it in writing, or at least use "accord and satisfaction" to document in writing any verbal agreement to be bound by acceptance of your payment check, being prepared to sue for breach of contract if they fail to follow thru.

If you can get it removed by disputing or requesting validation, fine. This may work if you have paid on a collection account, some time has passed, and they don't want to be bothered messing with a dispute where they have no money to gain. But if their records are in order, and they are reporting accurately, there is no sure way, and you may have no basis for suing.

Or just request validation on all CA accounts, pay those that are validated to your satisfaction, and keep good records to ensure the account is not resold or misreported. Use any such errors to dispute and force removal. Put your efforts into rebuilding your credit as the negative accounts age.

When a problem is due at least partially to errors by creditors, use that to insist on removal of all negative reporting. This works most effectively when caught quickly, but still requires keeping good records to ensure future compliance.

Others may have their own approaches.

 

The basic "game plan" is "triage":

Rank problems/opportunities by likelihood of success or possibility of risk.
Still within SOL? If so, that may limit your negotiating/disputing possibilities.
Just start chipping away.


Your summary doesn't say what types of accounts these were initially. Sometimes that can matter. You also want to know the original date of delinquency, since that starts the 7 year reporting period, and you want the date of last payment, since that usually determines SOL.

Why so many piddling accounts about the same time?
Are a bunch of them medical, and if so, were all insurance amounts properly paid?
If not, push on that. Or if proper insurance discounts were not applied, push on that. Even if paid, these might be less of a problem in obtaining a mortgage later.

If your goal is to improve your credit by 2008, is this for a particular purpose, such as the purchase of a house? If so, you want to make sure they are dealt with, and don't come back, since a mortgage lender may require you to pay any unpaid debts on your reports.

 

On the medical accounts, were all insurance amounts properly paid?

 

You shouldn't be guessing.

Medical billing is notoriously error-prone, and significant medical care generates a shower of such error-prone bills and claims. My guess based on my own experience across many years and many providers is that there is some significant dollar error in 15% of medical bills.


Get copies of the EOBs from the insurance company and check. Get copies of the original bills, either directly from the medical providers, or thru validation. Get the full itemized bills, not the patient simplified ones. (You can look up the medical codes on the Internet to make sure your daughter was not charged for a circumcision, for example.) The amounts due from you should match up with the co-pays on the EOBs, and each bill should have a corresponding EOB to confirm that a claim was submitted and paid.

With medical bills, it is very easy for errors to happen. Any hospitalization creates multiple bills for multiple separate providers, each of which has to be submitted properly for the insurance part to get paid. Even minor errors in name, policy numbers, medical codes, etc, can result in non-payment, the bill may just sit in the provider's files waiting for insurance payments that will never come, and eventially the provider just bills the whole amount to the patient with no indication there was even any insurance problem.

There can also be errors in applying payments, for example, when a billing service bills for multiple physicians, and you send them a payment, but they apply it or the insurance payments to the wrong account. I have even seen money due back, even while the billing service was claiming some physicians had not been paid, when others had in fact been overpaid, and net, they owed me!

Since contractually if "in-network", or by common practice even if not, the providers accept payments based on the insurance schedule which adjusts the amount they would receive down before the insurance pays, if insurance claims are not properly files, the patient can get stuck with unowed bills way beyond even co-pays.

Furthermore, if the provider was in-network, and failed to file a claim timely, the contract may even provide that both the insurance company, and the patient, owe NOTHING, although claim billing screwups are still often resolved between insurer and provider even after this time limit passes.

There could even be a mix-up in identities, particularly if someone else was treated by that provider that had a similar name. (Someone on this board reported they were dealing with this type of problem only a couple weeks ago.)

Sometimes the best leverage you have to get a debt off your reports is to show that the debt is totally or even partially illegitimate. If the amount sent to collection, and getting on your reports, is due to a claim screw-up, and the amount is erroneous, you have both a moral and legal argument to get it off.