Allright, Here goes. Short Story so far its a three parter, Student Loans 7 from Sallie Mae with 7 derogs of 90 days late, one CA with a student loan from same University, and one hard Inquiry from Macy's. Long Story I've been reading about credit for the last two weeks on this forum and others and I've been taking in an awful lot but I know I'm not anywhere close to knowing what I should know. This is my situation posted below, I'm looking for sound strategies, tips, advice, the sort of thing to help keep pointing me in the right direction. I had two sets of students loans from college, one with sallie mae (7) and the other with USA Group which i believe was a division of the university. During my time at college I was under the impression that I didn't need to start paying my loans until 9 months after I graduated (05-04). I later found out that was only the case with my USA Group loans. In Dec of 2004 I set up an auto payment with USA Group and when I contacted sallie mae to set up payment with them I found out I was already 3 months late on all 7 of their loans which I should have started paying in Oct of 04 if I had had my act together, unfortunately for me I did not. The person I had talked to from Sallie Mae gave me a three options: pay the full amount now that's past due and continue payments, reconsolidate or refinance (i forget which), where they just add the missed payments plus interest to your loans and you start anew with a higher interest rate im sure) or do nothing and let them report it to my credit/send it to an agent. It was/is my full intention to pay my loans off, I just wish I hadn't started off with this blunder. So I chose option number two and have been making payments faithfully on time since. fast forward to a month or two ago. I started receiving threatening calls at work on my cell phone from a CA regarding one of my student loans. Having no idea what this was all about, and having no clue of my rights, I took the time to investigate the situation myself mainly out of curiousity as I knew I had set up automatic payments and should have been all set. After numerous calls to my University and a few calls back and forth to the CA despite his threats of sending my file to the "legal department", I took my time and found out that my school had decided to get out of the financing biz, and from what I understand sold all their balances to the CA. this was fine except that apparently they didn't have my correct personal information (again my fault) when they tried to notify me of this change and also that my automatic payments would cease. After figuring this out things got a little stressful because the CA kept telling me that by law I must pay him the payment in full within thiry days. I didn't have that kind of money so I was starting to get a bit worried. Another call to the school, to ask for advice, and the lady told me that having worked for a Credit Agency before, she told me that I had the right to make payments and that I didn't have to pay in full. So after a few more calls with the CA I was able to setup an automatic payment. My biggest concern with this however, is that I have no idea what the debt was when the CA bought it, and what if any fees or interest has been applied to it. I want to pay off my debts but I don't want to get screwed over and just pay the CA a hefty sum each month the rest of my life. Fast forward to a few days ago when I finally started checking into my credit reports. I found out that Sallie Mae has 7 90 day late derogs against me posted for Oct 04 The USA Group loan was closed/transferred with no lates. There is no record pos. or neg. regarding the CA they are not listed at all. And finally after registering with my fiance at Macy's we were tempted into signing up for the Macy's card as we'll be getting 5% cash for all purchases made on the wedding registry per Macy's card (would be 10% total if I hadn't got denied). Before applying I explicity asked whether or not Macy's would perform a hard or soft pull on our credit to which the lady promptly informed us that it would be a soft pull. Of course when I got my experian report in the mail, sure enough Macy's was listed under the Inquires shared with others (a hard pull). So I'm a little disappointed with that as well. So here's an attempt at a plan of action (PoA). ************************** 1. Get all three credit reports. 2. Dispute ridiculous innacuracies with Personal Information (there was alot) 3. Dispute Macy's Inquiry. 4. Send out a custom Validation Letter to the CA (I've thought about sending this letter out so that they recieve it the day before my auto payment goes through) but I'm not sure if it's too late for that yet or not as I've already spoken with the CA so many times and have started making payments to them. 5. Figure out what to do about the 7 derogs. I've tried calling in to Sallie Mae per the goodwill approach but that didn't really get me anywhere. And then I read later on that would be mainly due to the fact that it works with those who are only interested in further doing business with me. Sallie Mae just wants my debts paid on time. ************************** So far I'm on step #3 (most of this has to be done during regular business hours so i try to get as much done as i can during lunch breaks at work). I'd love to hear any tips or opinions on how to improve my current strategy or things i did wrongly and how to correct them.
