Hi,
I'm getting ready to deal with a charge off and need some advice. I just graduated and unfortunately made it through 95% of my college career managing credit and maintaining respectable scores for a college student, and things fell apart during the very end because I got locked into a serious bind with academic related demands. (I ended up having to spend over 2,500 hours on a project that I didn't get paid for because the project was directly tied to my graduation)
For now, I'm going to try and not disclose names until I understand what my first steps needs to be. If the names are going to be important in sorting things out right now, let me know.
Anyway; I have a MC account with one of the major issuers that was opened in 2003. Until recently, I didn't have any 30 day lates on it, and I can't say for sure that I do now, but I won't know until I check my CR which I'm doing later today. I have a meeting soon so I feel I really just want to get a jump on this post first.
This is what happened in as short a manner as I can trim it, at least right now. Sometime in early 2009 I got a letter from said major issuer saying that my account was included with a pool of accounts that had information compromised due to some sort of theft. The letter said that my account number was going to be changed and that a new card would be sent out. Also, my account dropped off my online access. I could log in with my username and password, but no accounts were listed.
Meanwhile, I had been making my payments using my bank's free auto bill pay which was generating checks and sending it to the payment address I entered from my bill at some point a long before that. Two days after the scheduled payment date with my bank, the payment would post online. I was doing it this way because I had trouble with the CC auto pay system in the past, where even though I had auto pay setup, there was a period in time in maybe 2006 where a handful of the payments were posting a few days late and racking up late charges. After 6 months of it happening, I worked through it with CRS, was given a $700 courtesy credit, canceled the CC auto pay system and setup it up using my own bank. The advantage of this was that if my checking had ISF on the scheduled date, the payment was sent from my credit card with the bank instead.
This worked great for a long time, and continued to work fine after this information compromise.
So--back to the original notice I got about the theft. The letter said a new card was being sent out. Some time had passed, and I didn't see a new card. A few months later I checked my CR and noted that the CR listing for this major issuer was showing that the account was being paid as agreed, and although the full account number was not listed, it was definitely different. I didn't have time to deal with all of this--there was a few times I had called CS, but I didn't get anywhere. I don't remember if the CSR had trouble finding my info, or if I was just disconnected while on hold each time. (I do remember getting fumed once after being on hold more than 30 or 45 minutes and got disconnected) I hadn't used the card in awhile anyway, so when I saw that my payments were still being received correctly I decided I wasn't going to worry about it at that time.
At some point a relatively short time after this all begin, I found the letter with my new card. It had been misplaced with some other stuff (I lived with a bunch of people in college housing, so mail sometimes gets "misplaced"). I opened it and it didn't list the complete account number, but it had the new card and listed a deadline to activate the card, which had passed. I don't remember correctly, but I think it said that if the card wasn't activated by the deadline that a new account number needed to be generated and a new card sent again.
To recap, this all started in early to mid-early 2009 (March, May something like that). By now it was summer and was pretty easy to forget it all and just move on with my payments being sent from my bill pay. I'll work this out "soon" I always said, when I would "have time" (ha)--it was easy to think this way because I thought my monthly payments were holding me off from dealing with this in the meantime. I'm also pretty sure I hadn't received anything from the issuer in awhile. This continued for some time more with no outward signs of trouble. Fast forward to 2010. Between about Dec '09 or Jan '10 to May '10 a few payments were canceled because of ISF both in my checking and on my credit card, so I would need to manually submit the bill pay request a few days later after fixing my funding issue. Because I essentially didn't have access to my account, I no longer knew when my payment was due so I can't say whether or not payment was received on time each time I needed to manually submit the bill pay payment. I can say that when I originally set up this bill pay, the date I choose was probably about 10 days before the due date.
I get a lot of calls, and I'm pretty busy during the day so I usually don't take them from people that I don't need to take at that moment. Especially since 1 to 2 calls a day were from some automated voice named "Linda" from Capital One that was calling me with a "very attractive offer" that I need to call her back on right away. The recorded message was exactly the same, but the phone number it came from was different every time. Anyway; one day in May, 2010 I was going through my voicemails and found a 2 or 3 week old voicemail from a guy at the issuer saying that my account was forwarded to his office and that he really needed to talk to me ASAP because there were still options left to help me and that he wanted to make sure I was aware of this.
Oh **bleep**, was my thought to that.
So I called him up right away. It turns out my account had been charged off 3 or 4 days prior. He was really nice and tried to be helpful, but he said at that point there was nothing he could do, even though I was willing and able to setup whatever payment plan he needed. But he said since it was officially charged off he didn't know what I could do except what for the CA to contact me. I explained to him that I didn't know the account was in trouble, explained some of the background, and told him that regular payments were being sent. Even if payments were arriving late when some of the auto bill pays were NSF and manually submitted later, this issuer's charge off policy is 6 months after there is account trouble that doesn't get brought current. When I spoke with him it hadn't been 6 months since the first time I hit the NSF situation and had to submit manually. He said he wasn't able to get a whole lot of information, but that all he could tell was something had happened more than 6 months ago which caused my account to not be current, even though my payments were being received.
So that's the background. A few weeks ago I got what I think is the initial contact letter from the CA. It lists the notice that says I have 30 days (about a week and a half) to dispute the validity of the debt. It also lists the debt that I owe to be at least $1,200 more than the last balance that I knew was on the card. Pretty crazy seeing as how 12 to 15 monthly payments of $100 each had been sent since the last time I knew what the balance was, and I didn't place any new charges on the account.
So anyway; I apologize for the lengthiness and I really appreciate the time anyone has spent reading this far. I need some help and advice on how I should handle this. I do plan on disputing the debt, but I would really appreciate it if anyone can suggest a course of action that I need to take, and how I should take it. I do intend of paying what I owe, and although I can afford to start a reasonable payment plan right now, I won't be able to pay the whole balance until sometime next year. Maybe early next year the sooner I find a real job.
I do realize that I made a big mistake by not being more diligent in straightening things out a long, long time ago, but this whole situation is a lot to deal with and since I thought there wasn't going to be any issue getting payments in, it was easy to keep putting off. I was supposed to finish and have a full time job a long time ago, but that has been delayed a long time because my academic situation kept getting more and more complicated, and consuming more and more of my time like a black hole (15-18 hours a day). I will however have a full time job within the next few months--most likely making between 50k and 60k, unless I take the first thing that comes my way in the 40s. Right now my income is minimal. I've been taking projects as I can get them to get some money coming in.
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Scold me for not being more diligent and proactive if you want--I can take it--but I do really need some advice on this. While I do intend to pay whatever I must pay, Iwould like to not have to pay all this extra $1,200 but I'd also like to have a paid in full notation as opposed to something saying I settled on a lesser debt. (I have heard that is worse) Best case scenario I'd like to work this out where I have this eliminated from my credit report, even if that means paying the extra $1,200. Either way; I feel this situation is borderline unfair (yes, life is unfair) and that it is not unreasonable to expect to resolve this in a manner that hurts my credit a minimum period of time, as opposed to years.
On top of all of this, I had this stupid "credit protector" program from the issuer. I got conned into taking it on the phone a long, long time ago, and had canceled it several times. It seemed that everytime my balance was PIF and a few statements passed without a balance, the credit protector charge would appear that next statement that carried a balance. Since I was paying for this credit protector program (even though I though I didn't think I needed it), it is really too bad all this happened because since I was unemployed as student, I could have probably enacted the program benefits. (Something like when you have a certain circumstance, like unemployment, your payments and interest are suspended for a certain period of time) Of course, even if I wanted to fire up the program benefits, it would have been a little tough seeing as how I couldn't even track down my own account to begin with.
What do you guys think about all of this?
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I guess the kicker is, although until I check my CR (and especially until I receive the disput information from the CA) it is too son to speculate on this--but if at some point the payments stopped being applied to my account, where the hell did they go?
If happens to be the case where any money I paid "evaporated" into nothingness, every payment for at least the last year had come from my credit card, so I might have some protection there. Not sure, but maybe. In 2008 I did have a charge I legitamately placed on this credit card, for something I never recieved, get taken off. This seems like a similar situation.
