Baddie Advice

[AnniFridFour]

I've gotten myself removed as authorized user from a 15k limit card that is always full that is my Mom's card, so after that reports on 2/28 I should be down from 90% Utilized to under 40% on just my own cards with a total limit of $3900.

Now I have to deal with the adverse records across my reports. I pulled my 3 reports back in November when I started this and I've got 6 total between the 3, some of them show up on 2 reports but none on all 3. They are all dumb stuff from years ago when I just ignored problems I shouldn't have, things like speeding tickets and traffic tickets I didn't pay, library fines. and one is a utility bill. All are between  $50-$216 so they are stuff I could pay now (the total on all 6 is $807)

What I'd ideally want to do is call up the people, offer a full pay for deletion and just pay them with one of my cards since the amounts are easy to handle. Everything I've seen talks about doing letters and certified checks etc. I'd really rather put these on a card all at once though and then pay it off over the next couple months so i can at least get some points on it and not have to keep free cash aside for this purpose in my checking account. 

I don't really get nervous dealing with this stuff on the phone so I'm not concerned about being able to say the right thing with whoever I call, but especially as some of these are around 1-2 years from coming off I figure they'd be glad to get a full pay at this point. Only one of the collections for $93 has been constantly updating the report every few months, the rest just reported once and then never again.

Happy to put in all the specifics if it would be helpful, but any advice about this would be helpful. 

I also wanted to know if there's any difference to your score or how someone  views a baddie if it's at least paid in full as opposed to showing as unpaid? Or is it pretty much just as negative in either case. I know I have a little leverage not having yet paid them off and being willing to, and I suppose if I do it over the phone and offer to pay right then that I have to have them on their honor about doing the removal, but I was thinking I could request them to email me that they agree to remove before I give them my CC# so at least I'd have a written record in that sense of what they agreed to?

[happyus]

All the advice that I have seen on here has been to get it in writing.  I have had some success with sending letters for PFD, and I did one over the phone (It was a $6.00 collection that is over 9 years old) I opted to just pay it on a whim instead of sending a letter. Well long story short ... Here it is a month and a half later and they have not updated the reporting, in fact I am mailing them a letter today to request tthat  they speed up the process.  It has also been my experience that most CA's wont send you an email confirmation ... I have NO IDEA WHY, its such a waste of time. ... Good luck to you.

[AnniFridFour]

That's sort of what  I was worried about.

Is there a big difference in my score or how people would look at the report if these are paid or unpaid, or is it pretty much equally bad so long as they remain on the report?

[NWintellectual]

From what I have been told by various people on this forum and others is that once a collection appears on the report, paid or unpaid, the damage is done as long as it remains reported. However, under manual review, paid always looks better (in fact, some institutions will not approve if there are any unpaid items).