Excellent. I DEFINITELY want to hear how this all shakes out. Keep your chin up Cosmo, and let us know what happens. 
cosmo wrote:
Just checked Chase site. Small payment I made today cleared with no problem. Does this mean thery still own the account?
I'd have bet money that they owned it for the mere fact that you still had an online account accessible with Chase. But what this is showing is that they sure can take care of it, and you don't have to go thru Weltman who they were just using to collect for them . I am so glad it cleared! Now I want to see it post and debit from your bank account.
So things are looking very good for you! I'm guessing that the disposition of the account is closed so that you can no longer use it, but still valid, which is why you can pull up the acct online. The avail credit field is probably blank. You are still getting statements, or did that stop when Weltman started?
Now, it seems that the big problem will disappear (the CA at some point very soon depending on how things proceed can be disputed) but now that you have found that you should be able to handle this thru Chase there is a second issue of the best way to proceed with that acct. Will they re-open the acct, payment arrangements and GW derog once paid, settlement at some point for a deletion of the TL etc... the dance has just begun, but to much better song. 
i might suggest under the circumstances that you make very large payments over the next 6 months to pay it off. use the simulator to see what affect that would have on your scores. you can put the money you borrowed in a savings to offset interest and use it to make several large payments. not only will you be lowering UT, but you will build a bit of positive history before you make that bill go bye bye. if you can "afford" to stretch it out further, then that might be an option too. you'll pay more interest, but the positive history you build would "hopefully" make up for it. only you can decide what is more important to you.