Next Steps!? Please Help.
I've taken a lot of GREAT advice from this forum, but am calling on your help again. I am trying to repair my credit by having companies on my credit report validate the debt. I went to creditinfocenter and was able to find a sample letter to send to the companies. I thought I had it all figured out, but now I have a few more questions:
1) Do I only send letters to the collection agencies? Or to everyone that has a negative mark listed?
2) What if the company doesn't have their address listed? How do I find the information?
3) Do I send the same letter to the credit burueas that I am sending to the other companies like it is a "CC?"
4) What do I do after I send the letters? Do I just sit and wait?
I'm sorry if this info is already listed. I am in a rush and didn't have time to search it. Thanks in advance for any help anyone can give.
Also, I;m interested to know if there are any success stories from taking this route.
I was hoping that after 7 hours I would at least have one reply to this. Anything will help!
1. you need to send letters to everyone that has a mark against you. MAKE SURE you put in your letter that you DISPUTE THIS ACCOUNT.
2. Call the CRA and they can give you contact information for the creditor reporting the information. If they can't they need to remove it.
3. Don't send the same letter to the CRA's, but you can dispute it with the CRA's at the same time and go at it from two angles.
4. Document, follow-up, document, follow-up, document, follow-up.
Send all information by certified mail to the creditor's, wait 30-days, check your credit again. If the account does not show up as disputed on the credit reports, take the creditor to court, you are entitled to $1,000 per the FCRA, point that up in a follow-up letter when you serve them with the court papers.
Offer to drop the lawsuit for removal of the information and $500 instead of the $1000 and court costs.
THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!
That's exactly what I needed. Maybe you can answer one more question:
Last year I received a call from Sherman Aqc. representing themselves as Sears (my charged off account). I made one payment to them. They have started to call me daily. At first I would argue with them, but now I tell them that I'm not speaking with them and they should only contact me via written correspondence. They asked why I made the payment last year, but refuse now. I said it was because I thought they were the original creditor. Will this hurt me?
Well it doesn't hurt you, but officially they don't have to stop contacting you daily until they receive that request in writing.
The one thing you don't want to do is cut off all communication to them as that only leaves them one choice and that is to get the courts involved and pursue a lawsuit. I am not familiar with this group, but several credit card companies are starting to take this approach, like capital one.
They have found that they can get more money for a judgment rather than a written-off account and it also renews the SOL.
Good Luck
So is it better to just try to settle with these guys? Or am I doing the right thing by having them validated?
Validating is usually a good step to go through as it may cause some of them to fall off if they can't be validated, but you usually have to be ready to play hardball.
For a recent buyer of mine we had to go as far as filing a case with the courts to get them to drop it, at that point though if there truly is a violation you are controlling the negotiations then and not them. In that case those it was a $66 collection vs a $1500 lawsuit. They paid the seller $200, removed the record from all CRA's and has the original creditor issue a letter the account was paid in full in exchange for dropping the lawsuit for FCRA violations.
I don't know how old these debts are but I would only settle if they are fairly new and will be handing around for a while. If you are closing in on SOL or them dropping off on your own I would wait. Making a payment or settling can start the 7 year time clock of them staying on your record all over again.
Summerhays, you can get tons of info on how to do the specifics over on "creditboards" and "artofcredit". Like you, I am just getting started, but I have learned sooo many useful tips from those two web sites. Good luck!