A couple bumps that I need solved to improve my credit score.

[roxyhaveman]

Hello everyone,

I came here after a recommendation from reddit/r/personalfinance, so I am sorry if I don't know the lingo.

I am doing my best to clean up my credit, but have a couple bumps that I do not know how to tackle.

First, back in July I contacted the BBB to help me with a collections agency I was having problems with. Unknowingly, doing this had put this account in dispute on my credit report. Long story short, the problem was taken care of it and case was closed. This was in August and the account, fully paid off, is still showing up as in dispute. I am not sure what avenues I have to go down to fix it. Do I contact the BBB or the collections agency? Maybe the credit reporting agencies themselves? Would I need documentation if that was the deal?

Next, I have paid off a judgment on my credit back in July. I even received money back from the collections agency's lawyer saying I overpaid and so I know that it was received and processed. I expected to see a note somewhere on my credit report that this was paid off, but there has been no change. Should there be something next to the judgment on my credit report that it has been paid off? If so do I contact the credit agency, their lawyers, or the court?

Thank you so much!

[newmomnewme]

Welcome to the forum! I joined last month and it has been awesome. I have learned so much!!!  My two cents: 

1. I would contact the CRA, don't do initiate another dispute, call on the phone and speak to someone at each CRA and explain that you would like the dispute comment taken off of the account. I had a similar situation and the CRA told me to contact the collector......I wrote a letter to the collector requesting they ask CRAs to remove the dispute comments from their tradeline. If you contact the collector, that is one contact vs calling all three CRAs. 

2. I would contact the court first and ask if they judgement is satisfied or not; maybe you can check the court system on-line? If it is satisfied, you can ask the court to report it properly to the CRAs. If it doesn't show as satisfied in the court records, you need to contact the collection agency that you paid (make sure you have proof of payment) and ask to forward the satisfaction to the courts....you may be able to ask them to work with you to get it vacated (depending on your state) since they never sent in the satisfaction. 

Best of luck!