Hi everyone. Reading everyone elses report/questions & working on my husbands (actually having someone professionally handle his..[it was THAT bad!]) .. made me want to see if I can do anything about mine. As of right now, I think I'm considered "Lack of credit" or "thin credit" .. what ever you wish to call it .. I'm curious as to how I can raise my scores. EQ = 639, EXP = 649, TU = 681 Here's what's on my report: Currents: CAP ONE CC - $750 Limit - excellent pay history, just opened 6/11 (started out at $500 limit) Student Loans - $5250 - not having to pay these yet since I'm still enrolled - so it's showing good pay history. Oldies but Goodies: 53rd - CC - $0 balance - High Limit = $300 - good pay history - 9 yrs old Will this fall off, or does it matter since it was showing as a good account? 53rd - CC - $0 balance - High Limit = $378 - This is actually showing as same acct # as above, also 9 yrs old - how can I get this removed? or does it matter? AE - CC as an AU [but not showing as an AU] - $800 limit - Date opened 6/02 - Should this be on there? Heritage FCU - Car loan (5 yrs) paid off early, DO 1/05 \\ Closed 5/09 - $13,319 had cosigned - excellent pay history Badies/Collections: HSBC - DO 8/03 Prior Delinquency 6/05 - HL = $3600 - xsferred/sold to Palisades Palisades - DO 1/06 - PD 1/08 - Settled roughly in 2007 - Anything I can do with this account? Insight - DO 5/6 - pd off 2/11 Anything I can do with this one? Now before they gave me my CC from CapOne, I was stupid and tried for 3 different CC back to back which too many inquires on my report, I assume there's nothing I can do about that .. but wondering how that's affecting my scores? What would you suggest I do in order to help raise my credit? Thanks for your feedback, Kelly
There is something else you can do besides removing negative items or cleaning up your credit to improve your credit score. Add positive history to your credit report. Ask a family member or friend to add you as an authorized user to one of their existing credit card account. Just make sure they have perfect payment history and can maintain a low balance (10% or less of the credit limit). The higher the credit limit and the longer the payment history the better the results. Thanks! Heather with BoostMyScore.NET
The "currents" look alright, and I wouldn't worry too much about trying to change any of your "oldies but goodies". You don't want to remove anything with good history, even if it is closed. They may fall off in due time, but the hope is that they'll stay on your credit reports as long as possible. Besides building more positive payment history with the credit you currently have (and keeping your CU ratio under 10%), Heather's suggestion about adding yourself as an AU should give your credit scores a boost too. Oh, and all those hard inquiries will hurt your scores a bit, but there's really nothing you can do about it now. In the future, make sure you spread out your credit card applications over the course of the year so you don't have too many hard inquiries hit your reports all at once. Now,let's move on to the "baddies". So, the first 2 you list are for the same debt right? HSBC charged it off and sold it to Palisades who the reported it as a collection? I just want to make sure I'm following you here. And then you have the other collection that was already paid off as well? Is there a charge-off reported for this debt too?
Yes, the HSBC sold/xsferred the debt to Palisades, and then Palisades was paid off (settled) and it doesn't say anything about charged off, just says "acct pd in full for less than the full balance" .. then the Insight bill doesn't show "charged off" - EQ reflects $0 balance & then paid, EXP reflects $0 balance & "paid acct, was a collection", TU reflects $0 balance & automated acct..(whatever that means) The HSBC was opened in 2003, it's only reporting through EQ which is my lowest score. Palisades is showing opened in 2006 and it's only reporting through EXP which is my 2nd lowest score. My question is since HSBC is 9 years old, shouldn't that be off of my report by now? And should Palisades "fall off" next year sometime? or what would determine that?
Oh, and I applied for a CapOne Journey Card and they approved me, actually gave me a $2000 limit, so I guess my credit is getting a little better. This card has lower APR and no annual fee where my other one has a $39 annual fee and 24% apr. The Journey Card was created for students to help build credit with responsible use, gives access to your monthly credit score plus an interactive tracking tool to help monitor your credit. 1% cb on all purchases and 25% bonus when you pay your bills on time monthly. I think I'm going to like this card. I just wish it had 12 months no interest like my other one had!
Thanks for the additional info. The DOFD (Date of first delinquency) is what matters when determining how long something can remain on your credit reports. Regarding the HSBC/Palisades debt, it looks like the DOFD might have been in 2005, which means it should fall off your credit reports this year (7 years). If you can't find the DOFD on your credit reports, you can request it from the credit bureaus. They're required to keep that information on file. Unfortunately, I don't think there's much you can do regarding the Insight debt since it was already paid off/settled last year. If there's anything incorrect about the listing on your credit reports, you could always dispute it through the CRAs and hope for the best. The CA might not respond to the investigation since they've already got their money and moved on. Do you know when the DOFD was for this debt?
How do I get the item from Palisades removed if it doesn't fall off? Insight - I'm not 100% sure, but I had the services hooked up in 5/2006 and I moved out around Oct 2007. I had forgot to pay the final bill, so it would have been around that date for the DOFD.
Official answer: If a tradeline is 100% complete, accurate, and verifiable; there is not much that can be done to remove something. That said, very few tradelines are 100% complete, accurate, and verifiable, so look over the tradeline with a fine-tooth comb to find anything that makes it incomplete, inaccurate, or unverifiable.
Okay so what I found out is the following: Palisades: Ownership is showing as "Invididual" when this was a "Joint" account with my mother. Date open: is showing 1/2006 is this supposed to be the date this particular company took over? Prior Delinquency is showing as 1/2008 when the account was settled in 2007. Is this enough to have the information deleted from my profile or just updated? The DOFD was in 2005, not 2008.
EXACTLY the type of fine-tooth comb look that you need to do... They can ALWAYS update, hopefully since they don't have a stake in the posting any more since the account was settled, it won't be worth digging through the muck to find the information to verify the tradeline, which would then result in deletion. I've only had one time where the CRA did an instant delete, and that was when my special friends at TU couldn't argue that the way the tradeline had just been re-verified was accurate in any way, shape or form. (Hint: I 'knew' the result before I hung up the phone so accurately, that when I walked away from the pay phone I was singing "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye", yes, the verified information was THAT bad...) So you would dispute the tradelines with disputes that are SPECIFIC to the pieces of information that you discovered as errors. The case you would want to cite in your letters is Johnson v. MBNA, and demand that they do a comprehensive review of the tradelines from the original account documentation. (For a good read, read the case. ) In summary. Mrs. Johnson's ex-husband had an account with MBNA, after divorce, he declared BK, even though allegedly Mrs. Johnson was an AU, MBNA took her ex-husband off the account, and made Mrs. Johnson the exclusive owner of the account. She disputed that she wasn't the owner, just an authorized user, MBNA verified it only doing a computer search that they had 2-pieces of Mrs. Johnson's information in their computer systems (they didn't have her SSN or DOB - hmmmm, how many times does the credit card company not have those two pieces of information for the sole card holder). Mrs. Johnson sued and won, because MBNA didn't thoroughly research the dispute which was a little more complex than a standard "NOT MINE" dispute. (Had she only argued "not mine", MBNA may have been won.)
Thanks! The letters are ready to mail! I sent HSBC (OC) a letter disputing the age of it (just to see if they'll bite, and go ahead and remove since it's just a couple months away) A letter to Palisades disputing inaccurate information and requested they remove the information immediately. And a goodwill letter to Insight in hopes they remove the information! If not I can deal with it. Hope this works!
You may also want to send a dispute of the same information to the CRAs that the tradelines are appearing in, to trigger the dispute provisions on the CRA side.
