I opened an account with HSBC over a year ago, lost my job due to the business closing with no notice. I haven't been able to find any steady work over the past 6 months. I made the choice of paying the credit card minimum payments or putting gas in to my car. With my tax refund I wanted to pay almost the entire account off, leaving about 100 in late charges which they said they would remove for me if I paid that amount. However, I wanted them to remove the late pay status and make the account current, or delete the tradeline. They refused to do either, saying they are unable to go back and change anything with the credit history. I asked them if they would respond to a dispute showing the account was never late, they again said no. I dont want to pay the money just to show paid in full was late 120, or whatever it is. Suggestions? I'm ready to pay it now.
HSBC is likely going to remain on your report for 7 years. They are tough to get deleted. If you don't pay them, then you are going to have a charge off. They will then immediately sell it to a JDB who will then add their tradeline to your report. So now you have a $0 charge off sold reporting, and a collection account reporting. Others may not agree, but I would pay it off and it will end up reporting Paid as agreed with a row of lates. Seems a lot less damaging to me.
If it's late, but paid, it begins to lose it's effect in 2 yrs and then it loses some more in 4 yrs. The sooner it gets paid, the sooner that time will start.
Jlynn is correct. Moreover, you don't want to deal with Midland Credit Management which is who they will sell it to. Their tradeline will reduce your scores much further by virtue of their inaccurate reporting methods which, are in my opinion, malicious.
Listen to APex. MCM came back as valid last month when on my reports the last time they updated was 3 years ago!!!I am in the same situation as you HSBC then Midland. I sent many letters (read my other posts on this). After many (@7 letters )with no response from HSBC MCM and All 3 CRAS I am having success with a different tactic. Basically I called every day MCM and HSBC. I called HSBC and said hey I don't remember this account can you send me proof its mine? After a few rude people from their outsourced phone system trying to say they have no info as it now belongs to Midland(MCM) I finally think i might be getting somewhere as I basically said HEY how can you verify to the CRAs and not explain it to me. The reason they even deal with me is I opened an HSBC account and told them they might have it confused, Long story short they are in the process of "getting" the account back from MCM. My supposition is that neither company knows what is going on. I will update on Saturday as that is when they told me to call back.
