My wife and I have high risk credit scores. I do not know enough about these reports yet to really remove the negative information on my own, but I am doing research and attempting to learn as much as possible.
I recently was involved in a vehicle accident and can not get approved for a loan, my car was totaled and I am waiting on the settlement, but in the meantime I need a car. My score is a 547 and my wifes is a 607.
In a desperate attempt to repair my credit I have contacted "Repair My Credit Now". They contacted me back quickly and were very kind and promised results. We are speaking with them tomorrow afternoon to discuss it in further detail. After doing research I am not to sure I can trust this company, and am not to thrilled about $800+ towards something I may be able to resolve myself.
Here is my situation, when we moved I wasnt able to pay all my bills (my wife is in the Air Force and I had to find work). Once I found work, I paid all my late fees and caught everything up and paid ALL my credit cards off except for one which I am still paying towards. This resulted in the following:
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United Revenue Corp
- $40.00 and shows a KD under Jan 09, can it be removed?
HSBC Furniture Row
- Jun and Jul of 08 resulted in a 60 days past due, paid in full resulted in all OKs, can these be removed?
Bank of America.... this one gets nasty.....
- DEC 07 - MAR 08 - OK
- APR 08 - JUL 08 - 30, 60, 90 Days past due
- AUG 08 - SEP 08 - OK
- OCT 08 - NOV 08 - 30 days past due
- DEC 08 - OK
- JAN 09 - APR 09 - 30, 60, 90, 120 days past due :(
- MAY 09 - SEP 09 - 90 days past due..? Why are all of these 90?
- OCT 09 - DEC 09 - OK
- Back in APR 09 I set up automatic payments to repair these and was told I would not be hit on my report, obviously this was not true. :(
HSBC Best Buy
- JAN 08 - 30 days past due
- NOV 08 - 30 days past due
ZALES
- MAR 08 - JUN 08 - 30, 60, 90, 120 days past due :(
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All of these have been paid in full, except for the Bank of America card, it is currently about 75% maxed out (it is however closed). I have about 6 other entries on my report, but they are all perfect... even though one says potentially negative... not sure why.
As for my wife, this is what hers states (she has barely anything on here report lol)
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EQUIDATA
- Past due $199.99 - this was for a cable box that I told them to come get, they never did.
- Past due $250.00 - this was for a bill, we paid this bill, it says unpaid...?
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thats it for hers.
I have taken action to dispute the bank of america charge on my account and the two Equidata charges on my wifes account. I used the online source for Experian and have yet to receive any decision on mine, but my wifes were denied and remain on her record.
What should I do in this case... should I continue as planned and use "Repair My Credit Now", or are these small enough that I can handle this on my own and potentially save myself $800+ dollars? If so, where do I begin?
Thanks everyone... I really appreciate it, I have been stressing so much because we only have one car now and I have to take my boy to daycare, drop my wife off at work, than get to work myself... VERY inconvenient! It is just sad that I get hit, my car and hobby are taken from me.... and I don't get anything in return without having to go through an even more stressful and agonizing process of getting a settlement... ugh
Once again, thanks for the help!
Hi Boxinabag
Despite what reflects in your report you have said that you owe money only to Bank of America and the rest has been taken care of. Do I understand you right? Well, if that is the case and even after you have paid the money, your report reflects a few debts as due, you should dispute the debts and get them removed. This should take care of your credit score to some extent.
Now about the debt you have with Bank of America, how much is it? Are you in a position to offer them a settlement? If so, then try and negotiate with the bank for a settlement amount. Get everything in writing to avoid any trouble in future. Based on how much money you owe the bank, you may also look for a loan with a lower rate of interest and pay off the debt. Then you can gradually keep paying on this new loan. It might be a little difficult for you to find a new loan right now, but I would suggest do your research. It would only be sensible to get a loan that has a lower rate of interest than what you are paying on your debt with Bank of America. Let us know what progress you have made.
Hey Carol, appreciate your help.
My debt with Bank of America is $3,602.
So you are saying even though mine are paid off (other than Bank of America) I still have debt on my report? would that be the 30, 60, 90, 120 days past due marks on my report? and since those are paid they can be disputed and removed? Also what is the way to dispute the KD?
Should I contact the creditors and use this letter:
http://www.creditmagic.org/letters/credit-inquiry.html
Thank you very much!
Can anyone point me in the right direction on how to properly dispute late payment marks and Derogatory marks?
Be very careful with these companies that promise to fix your credit for a price, it is very hard to get negatives removed, they pretty much have to age and fall off. I am not sure that I would be giving them $800 for something that they can not do.
Yeah it actually was close to $2900 for my wife and myself... lost interest fairly quickly, I am currently doing research on how to do this myself, and so far all I need is a template document to make a dispute letter off of for each of these.
Here are the stats of what I was told from my free consolidation with Repair My Credit Now:
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Monthy charge - $109/mo per person
Retainer fee - this differs, mine, $906, my wifes, $776.
This lead to close to $2990 if we enrolled in the full 6 month program.
According to RMCN these are MY standings:
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Experian - 547
Equifax - 547
TransUnion - 547
Inquiries - 7
30 days past due - 28
60 days past due - 12
90 days past due - 24
120 days past due - 6
Total days past due - 70
Negative accounts - 7
Key derogatories - 1 $40.00
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These are MY WIFES standings:
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Experian - 607
Equifax - 581
TransUnion - 585
Inquiries - 6
30 days past due - 10
60 days past due - 4
90 days past due - 16
120 days past due - 2
Total days past due - 32
Negative accounts - 3
Key derogatories - 2 $449.99
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There is no contractual obligation for the 6 month program, you can stop when you want and can cease to pay. You however must pay the retainer fee in full. The retainer can be broken into payments.
If you refer a person a monthly $109 fee is removed.
They stated that it is a permanent fix, and that disputing information is only temporary.
They stated that I would see progress after 30-45 days, and their priority is to get me to a 620 as soon as possible, than continue with the program. Could potentially reach 680-700.
What they require
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In all honesty, the man I spoke with was very polite and well mannered, I appreciate his time in speaking with me, but after the cost and the amount of identification required to hand over for the service, I think I will do this on my own, from my understanding, they do nothing more than what you can do on your own.
So now I come back to my original point. How to properly dispute a these marks on your record.
Below is what I have collected, if you could confirm this, that would be great.
Late payments: Dispute the late payments, if they prove it, dispute it again, there is a chance that they will not respond in the 30 days and will be required, by law, to remove it from your record. This becomes easier as time goes on, more recent late payments will be more difficult to remove.
Charge-offs: Contact the original creditor (if possible) and attempt to agree on a settlement. In my case I will contact the cable company about the 2 charge-offs on my wifes report. One was $199.99 (cable bill) the other was $250 (cable box). Tell them you are willing to pay in full if they are willing to remove it from your report, if they do, have them send you a written statement saying this and forward the message to the credit bureaus.
Negative Accounts: This is good, and bad. Bad because it is paid off, you have nothing to work with. Good because you can still investigate it. And alot of creditors will store closed accounts in a seperate system or database, making it more difficult and inconvenient to access for verification. Once agian, the 30 day limit applies and it must be removed if verification is not received.
Hard Inquiries: Send a document to the creditor that performed the inquiry asking them to remove it from your report. They must send you documentation that you signed saying that it was ok to run that inquirie. If they don't, it must be removed. If they do, than look over it and if you find any play in wording, respond saying it is too confusing and you will contact the State Banking Commission. This may get them to remove it.
So that is what I have so far, what do you all think?
I must say I am not trying to belittle Repair My Credit Now, I am sure it is an effective solution, I just don't agree with all the necessary identification that is needed and the outrageous cost of the program.
I have outlined all my dispute letters for each bureau for my wife and myself.
Tonight I will be hand writing them and scanning copies of them to save on my computer in an organized file with the date they were written, next to that I will have a spreadsheet with the dates of when each document was written and shipped off. I will ship them with certified mail and obtain a receipt of delivery.
Each dispute letter contains all the disputes for that bureau, I am not sure if I am supposed to make a seperate letter for each dispute or put them all on one, I will put them all on one this time.
I have a feeling they will all come back in a few weeks with a "Remains" status, when this happens I will send the Bureaus a Debt Verification Letter. Hopefully this will remove the entries.
I have all my letters written up and will be mailing them off on Monday, I will keep you all informed on how it goes. As of right now I have a question.
Since my car was totaled and will be paid for, will the paid off installment loan on my record impact it positively?
I am currently trying to get a buddy of mine (score of 749) to co sign a loan for me, so i can get a car next week too.
I wish you luck with this whole mess, Hopefully it will work out for you. Keep us updated on what is going on.
credit
There is no 'magic fix' on how to fix 'your' credit. Someone, above, posted to be very leary of those companies who promise 'you the world'. NO ONE should have to pay ANYTHING to 'fix' their credit. Usually..in these cases, these so-called co's don't do anything to help you. And, at the same time, you probably will go MORE into debt trying to pay their 'fees' every month.
credit
...want to add....you said something about a friend C-Signing for you. I'm not saying that's a 'bad ting', if he's willing to do that. But....HE needs to realize if, for some reason, YOU don't pay, the collector can go after HIM.
Not sure if you will get any of these removed. But there is nothing they can do that you can't do yourself. But I will add I had trouble with dish network last year. I had to move for a couple of months and had them transfer my service and cut this one off. When I moved back I found out they never cut the service off here. I called to let them know I had moved back and the service wasn't ever turned off here. They said they hadn't had a chance to get to it but it didn't matter then. Well on my bill I was charged for both places. And I told them they could cancel my service. Well then I got an over draft on my bank account because they said I didn't turn in box. Needless to say I got my money back and they never reported anything to the credit agencies. They do this a lot. I believe you should be able to get that one removed.
Just letting you all know, in the past 5 days I have received all of my return receipts. The countdown to 30 days begins I guess, I am anticipating that everything remains from all three and I will have to request debt validation and legitimate proof of these claims. In which case it will go either way, from my understanding, a majority of the time it goes in the "we cant find it" direction, that is my hope.
Well today I got some letters in from the bureaus, basically saying that I did not provide proper identification and need to enclose a copy of my drivers license and a utility bill or bank statement... this is probably the most ridiculous crap ever but what ever, so now I am going to re write all these dang letters again and pay another 34 dollars to get the information shipped back using certified mail... these credit bureaus seem like they are against me... anyone know if I need to rewrite the letters or if they will have them on record? I also scanned each one and can print them back out and sign it, think that would work?
OK, what is "Repair My Credit Now" doing?
This sounds exactly like you are doing everything yourself. did I miss something? did you hire those people or not?
I don't mean to be a downer but I think that the personal automobile has been the single purchase that has led to financial ruin. even in this horrible economy upside down mortgages will eventually right. but borrowing money for a car? the value plummets as you roll off the lot. that isn't even half of my rant. all these cars are ruining our health and environment. sorry.
Could you consider taking the car that you can afford with cash?
I am doing everything myself.
I do have some good news.
Among the letters that we received asking for proper identification, we never received one from TransUnion. Turns out they accepted our dispute and so far I have received one back for my wife saying that the two Equidata charge-offs remain but the bank of America was removed from hers!
I than checked all three of her scores, Experian - 704 Equifax - 524 and TransUnion - 704
The reason for the low Equifax one is because the Bank of America is still on that one, I am sure it will be gone once I send in proper identification.
I than got curious and checked my score
She went from a 607 to a 704 in one month!! , it is a 628!!
The only thing I saw different on mine was the charge-off was removed (it is still there but has no information on it and I have no delinquencies) and my associated bank was current instead of "Potentially Negative" So . So in one month I went from a 547 to a 628!
This stuf f works, and there is still plenty to get removed, I have am hoping to have both of us in the low -mid 700's in 3 months :)
Make sure its from MyFico
Make sure your credit score is a real Fico score. Many free credit score sites like the ones offered by TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian use a different way to generate your credit score rather than using your true credit/Fico score. Your Fico score is what creditors go by. Free credit score sites usually give a higher score than it actually is.
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