Hi,
I am new here and have read lots of posts about this topic but I am still a little confused..
When I was younger I basically destroyed my credit. I have three charged off accounts and now I am looking into buying a home and these cards I just ignored are coming back to haunt me :-/
Two cards were mine and the other card was identity theft.
I tried once in 2006 to talk to Capital One about it when I first pulled my credit report, I thought it would be easy because one of my 2 credit cards was a Capital One and this one's billing address and where it was being used was no where near me. The rep however told me it was my responsibility and my credit, which didn't make sense that they would open two credit card accounts to the same person at the same time with different mailing addresses and not think that to be suspicious,.And at the age of 19 I decided not to pay out of principle, and completely ignored it. Now trying to dispute it is difficult especially since they know I knew about the account since 2006 and made no effort to try to dispute or remove it (besides a couple phone calls in 2006).
The other 2 cards were used by and were being paid by my ex-husband, once we divorced (I didn't list any debt because I ended up filing for divorce by default) his payments stopped and again out of principle I wasn't going to pay for things he used, not considering the cards were already in my name and that would only affect me.
My question is how can I handle these charge offs? 1 is with 1st financial and the other 2 by capital one, all of them are past the SOL with the last activity being in Jan. 2008 (I'm in CA). Do you think capital one will remove both accounts if I pay the one that was mine, because even now I refuse to pay the account that wasn't opened by me even if I have to wait the 2 years for it to fall off on its own. My capital one account and 1st financial bank account are still held by the OC, but the fraudulent capital one account went to collections.
Does anyone have any experience with these companies and getting them removed from your credit report? I would think they would be easier to deal with since I can offer to pay and they are past SOL. I saw the sample letters posted, is that my best bet?
I need to bring my credit up 14pts in order to qualify for a home loan, and if it won't change my score I can just continue to save my money and try again in 2 years once they all fall off. (which I really don't want to do)
