Hi Charles
If you want to improve your credit score, you need to pay off the existing debts first. For this you need to pull out your credit report, and find out the creditors to whom you owe the debt. If the debt has not been sold off to any CA, just send debt validation letters to the creditors asking them to validate the debt and if they properly validate the debt, negotiate for pay for deletion agreement so that as soon as you pay off the debt in full, the creditor removes the debt from your report. And as the negative listings goes out of your credit report, your credit score will improve.
Yes, Mary is right. You should at the same time also remove the hard inquiry listings from your credit report because each hard inquiry listing reduces your credit score by as much as 5 points. For this, you need to find out the names of the inquirers that appear in your report and send letters to them by certified mail asking them either to verify your authorization or to remove the listing from your credit report. As per the Federal law only authorized listings should appear in your credit report and so the inquirers should remove any unauthorized hard inquiry listings from your credit report. For a sample hard inquiry letter you can visit the link http://www.creditmagic.org/letters/index.html
It is very difficult to improve your credit score much from 550. Even if you remove some of the negative listings from your credit report by PFD agreement and few hard inquiries, your credit score will improve by as much as 50 to 100 points. This is because firstly you cannot remove all debt listings even if you pay them off because some of the debts may be sold off to the CA by the OC and the OC listing will remain in your credit report for seven years even if the CA listing goes off and Secondly, all hard inquiries cannot be removed from your report. Only those inquiries gets removed which are not authorized by you.
Hi Charles
If you want to improve your credit score, you need to pay off the existing debts first. For this you need to pull out your credit report, and find out the creditors to whom you owe the debt. If the debt has not been sold off to any CA, just send debt validation letters to the creditors asking them to validate the debt and if they properly validate the debt, negotiate for pay for deletion agreement so that as soon as you pay off the debt in full, the creditor removes the debt from your report. And as the negative listings goes out of your credit report, your credit score will improve.
Yes, Mary is right. You should at the same time also remove the hard inquiry listings from your credit report because each hard inquiry listing reduces your credit score by as much as 5 points. For this, you need to find out the names of the inquirers that appear in your report and send letters to them by certified mail asking them either to verify your authorization or to remove the listing from your credit report. As per the Federal law only authorized listings should appear in your credit report and so the inquirers should remove any unauthorized hard inquiry listings from your credit report. For a sample hard inquiry letter you can visit the link http://www.creditmagic.org/letters/index.html
It is very difficult to improve your credit score much from 550. Even if you remove some of the negative listings from your credit report by PFD agreement and few hard inquiries, your credit score will improve by as much as 50 to 100 points. This is because firstly you cannot remove all debt listings even if you pay them off because some of the debts may be sold off to the CA by the OC and the OC listing will remain in your credit report for seven years even if the CA listing goes off and Secondly, all hard inquiries cannot be removed from your report. Only those inquiries gets removed which are not authorized by you.