Hi, I am looking for advice. I have one bad item on my report from capital one and it is killing my score. I am in experian special handling but im nervous to dispute it with that department because I dont want to be flagged for disputing accurate information.
In 2014 I had an illness that left me incapacitated for 1 year. At the time I appointed a family member as my POA to pay my bills but he didnt get my cap one bill.
So they sent it to collections and last spring I got a call from a collector and offered to pay in full (was only like $700) but they said they would take $630. So I paid it. Then my score tanked because that collector reported an update basically resetting the clock on the debt. I know more now and would never pay the collector but creditor, and even if I did I would pay in full and require a letter from them stating that they would either delete early or put as paid in full. But I didnt know that at the time.
Since then, I have opened an AMEX (6/2016) charge card, I paid off an auto loan (2/2017) that I had opened 10/2015 (bad move as it turns out, my scores tanked by 30 pts), pd down another auto loan (opened 7/2016 pd down 2/2017) to 10% of origin, and opened another credit card (1/2017) and bank credit card (5/2016) for $7k and $5k respectively in credit, and i keep my util ratio between 0 (zero hurts my score i learned) and 7% NEVER more. But still, after a year of positive credit history with these new cards and auto loans my score is almost where it started 637 experian. It was up to 669 exp but after paying off my auto loan and having 0 balance on my cards in FEB it dropped 30 pts. Since I opened all these accounts beginning Oct of 2015 my exp score has ranged from 625-669 and the other two have ranged higher. But now I'm back where I started. I realize that unless I get rid of the CAP ONE $700 charge off and the subsequent collection marked settled I cannot expect to see my score increase into the "GOOD" territory which is what I would like to see. Before 2015 I didn't really use credit and only was an auth user on parents cards which were always paid in full. After I became an adult I always made enough money to pay my bills and never needed a mortgage loan. I was very lucky, but now that I would like to get a mortgage I have tried to rebuild my credit beginning with the first auto loan mentioned above. I have tried to get a decent amount of credit to show conservative use to try to boost my score. But ive found that my score goes the opposite direction of where I think it ought to based on my behaviors! Ex. I always pay the Amex before it closes bc it doesnt report a limit so any charges on that card are part of my low total credit line of 12,000 on the other two cards. But one month I thought id let it go to statement with a bal of $20k and then go back to my normal payment system to try to establish a high credit on card since no limit is reported. I thought the high credit might act like a limit for the charge card. I thought my score would suffer for a month or two until I got back to my normal system. My score went up accross the board!!! Then last month my score reconciled 1 paid in full auto loan, 1 auto loan paid down to 10% of origin down from 60%, 3 credit cards with 0 balance. It went down 30 pts!!
So I really would like to send the goodwill letter, but before I admit to a debt in writing I want to make sure I am making the right strategic move here. Perhaps I ought to just dispute with experian special handling? Let me know what you think since I clearly have no insight into how to affect an outcome on my score.
Any advice would help a lot- thanks much
