I was laid off for many almost 8 months, ending just over a year ago. We were forced to concentrate our savings on covering essentials like our mortgage, utilities and groceries. As a result, virtually all of my previously existing accounts are in various states of negative status. They total about $27,000 (excluding my mortgage) across 10 accounts. 6 of those are charge offs, the remainder show severe late status.
I'm finally back on my feet and am looking to start rebuilding my credit. To that end, I pulled my credit reports and got my EQ Fico score from myFico. To my horror, it has dropped to 492 from the just over 800 it was a couple of years ago when I bought a car. My own mom wouldn't loan me money with that. ;)
My question is this: I know how I'm going to attack the charge offs - I'm going to offer pay for removal and see what happens - but I'm not sure what I can do with the accounts that didn't charge the debt off. A couple of them don't even have me in their collections department since I've been paying them recently. Is there any way to get them to change what they are reporting? Can I offer them higher monthly installments if they will remove the references to late pays? Can I offer them a lump-sum to remove it as I would the charge-offs even though it isn't in collections? Well, I know I can *offer* them anything, so I guess what I'm asking is has anyone had any success improving these sort of negative accounts short of just keeping on paying and letting them age off?
I have lots of good history in my report - including 10 years of on-time mortgage payments, 2 paid off car loans, and a number of revolving accounts that I'd payed off and closed not long before finding myself jobless - so I feel like my score would rise dramatically if I could just put lipstick on some of these pigs. :)
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
/gh
good-ham,
There are a few strategies that you can try to improve your credit:
-First, file a dispute for every negative item on your report with all three credit reporting agencies. They'll ask your creditors to show proof of your delinquency. Sometimes companies can't come up with any proof of delinquency, or simply don't send a timely response to the credit agency. If that happens, the credit agency will usually remove it from your report.
-If you have few active accounts now, try to reopen the accounts in good standing that you paid off before you lost your job (but don't use them). The more unused credit you have available, the better your score. Some companies may reopen a previous account without a completely new credit check. If that happens, you've got a positive item on your credit report.
-Apply for new credit, even if it's a secured card (do this only if you haven't applied for more than a few accounts in the past year). Being accepted for credit helps your score, and there are a number of low-limit credit cards out there that can help you. Just be careful not to apply for too many within a 12 month period, which can hurt your score.
-Talk to a credit repair attorney. Some companies out there are experts at negotiating a resolution with old creditors, and a professional credit attorney may be able to help you strike a deal to pay off these old debts at an affordable rate. Any debt that is successfully resolved (even after a long period) looks better than a completely delinquent one.
Each of these strategies have helped me boost my credit score, and I hope they can help you as well. Good luck!
credit
I've tried to 'dispute' a few debt accounts on my CR. However, everytime the CRA's have written me back, they tell me, in the letter, that "the debt has been verified" when I didn't get anything from the CA's, etc. A few times I have called the CA's (that were involved). According to them, they weren't the ones that 'verified' it to the CRA's and I still have to pay the debt. Also..they say "they are not obligated to send me any verification that I owe the debt...take our word for it" they say. So frustrating!!!!!!!!!!