CapitalOne Charged Off account

[Vu]

Hello experts,

Would like to know what would you do if you were in my situation.

Two years ago I have made some bad personal, life, financial choices that have left my credit in ruined since then (from ~710 scores to ~580).  I am in a situation now that can afford to start to pay off in payments of this charged off account.

The Capital One credit card account currently has charged off status and according to Capital One it is servicing by NCO Financial.  But if I go to www.solutions.capitalone.com I can log in and make payments.  I haven't hear or receive anything from NCO.  The last time I've made the payment on this account was about 2 years due to my stupidity.  They still continued to add interests into the account as of today, luckily it's on a 5% interest rate so it's ~$17/month.....

Would you try to contact Capital One to work out a payment plan (as I don't have the money to pay off the $4500 balance).  Or should I wait until I have the money to pay off then request a PFD?

Thank you.

[ptkdude]

I called Capital One back in November 2010 regarding two charged off accounts I had.  One was still with Capital One, and the other had been placed with a collection agency (Frederick J. Hanna). 

Let me first say that the woman I spoke with at Capital One, Karen, was very professional.  She treated me with complete respect.  For the account that Capital One still possessed, she worked with me to make payments over 10 months, with the last payment going at the end of this month.

She was not able to work with me on the other account, and referred me to the collection agency.  Having worked in collections before, I knew that it was worth a shot to ask Cap1 to recall the account from the agency, but Karen wasn't able to do that.  I tried to work out what was in my opinion a reasonable payment plan to pay the account over 12 months, and the CA refused.  Everyone I dealt with at the CA was pretty nasty to me pretty much any time I contacted them.  About that same time, I got a statement in the mail from Cap1 for the account, which provided the capitalone.com/solutions web address, as well as where to mail payments directly to Capital One.  At that point, since the CA wasn't working with me, I sent the CA a letter stating what I was going to pay (over 12 months), and that I would remit payment directly to Capital One. 

For the account at the CA, I sent my payments to Capital One electronically from my bank.  They all posted promptly.  I ended up paying that account off in about 5 months.  Even when paid the CA was unfriendly and even lied about my balance.  Capital One, however, confirmed it was paid off.

By all means give Capital One a call.  They might be able to pull it back from the CA so you can work with Cap1 directly, but there's no guarantee.  At the very least, you can get instructions on how to pay them directly.  I just paid it through Chase bill pay like it was an open credit card account.

Best of luck to you, and don't forget, you'll feel so much better once you start resolving this!

[Anonymous]

I need help if anyone knows the best thing for me to do.  I made some really bad decisions when I was depressed years ago and I let a capital one card go into collections over 4 years ago.  IT went in with a balance of $2000.00 .  I would like to offer to pay it off for that amound however my credit report now shows it has a balance of almost $4000.00 and has been charged off years ago.  If i send a settlement letter for the original 2 grand that I owed, is there a real chance that capital one will settle.  Also if I just wait for it to fall off my credit will it continue to count against my score or has the damage already been done.  I appreciate any type of feedback

[llecs]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I need help if anyone knows the best thing for me to do.  I made some really bad decisions when I was depressed years ago and I let a capital one card go into collections over 4 years ago.  IT went in with a balance of $2000.00 .  I would like to offer to pay it off for that amound however my credit report now shows it has a balance of almost $4000.00 and has been charged off years ago.  If i send a settlement letter for the original 2 grand that I owed, is there a real chance that capital one will settle.  Also if I just wait for it to fall off my credit will it continue to count against my score or has the damage already been done.  I appreciate any type of feedback

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Keep your state's SOL in mind through this process. CapOne loves to sue. If you do have $4000 set aside to use if you had to  (to stop a judgment), then I think you are OK by sending a PFD letter for the original $2000. If they reject the PFD offer, then offer a settlement in writing for the $2000. If they reject that, then you might have to bump that up, but they've been known to accept settlements.

[Juan123]

Unfortunately, once an account has gone into collections the customer profile is usually deleted off the system so they're unable to even look you up. So you'd have to deal with the collection agency directly... which is gonna suck because NCO had my kay jewelers account... they refused to do anything and ignored my GW letter(s)

[RobertEG]

Many collection agreements include terms that any payments made must be through the debt collector.  So you have private issues between the OC and debt collector to deal with.    All you can do is offer to deal with the OC, but dont be surprised if they state that you must deal with the debt collector.

Getting the OC to "pull back" the collector assignment with their debt collector wont compel the debt collector to delete any prior reporting of their collection to the CRA, or prevent them from reporting their prior collection authority, even "after the fact."    It just terminates their further collection on the debt.  Having had the debt pulled out from them probably wont make them very receptive to later good-will requests for deletion.

Since the debt collector has not yet reported to the CRAs, you might consider a modified PFD offer to them, requesting NOT reporting in exchange for payment.

Avoiding the reporting of a collection will prevent a hit on your score.  Just paying the OC wont provide score improvement without a PFD acceptance on their part to also delete their prior derogatory reporting.