Sorry of the long 1st post 
After deciding to stick around in the states for at least a few more years (been here 11-12 now), I figured it was time to grow and fix the mess I'd let get pretty terrible when I got divorced a few years ago
I basically stopped paying anything and everything that was associated with the Ex, most of it was in my name though so it really was only screwing me lol. But I was buying everything cash and had no long term plans to stay in the states anyway so I didn't care.
Fast forward 4 years....
I look at my credit and holy crap it was horrible lol
In march I had
2 Charge off on a Chase CC + collection + judgements
Charge off on Citi CC + collection + judgment
Charge off + collection on comcast (their mistake!)
3 Verizon charge offs all under a couple hundred bucks which just annoys me)
Oil company collections
tax lein
Forclosure
bunch of lates/30/60/90 etc
What a PITA this was going to be to clean up I thought to myself lol.
So in March I settled (NOT full payment) all of the collections. last week I decided to start proactively reaching out to some of these guys and trying to get them to remove the negative info.
---- Chase
sent out a GW email to Chase last week, within 2-3 hours of shooting the email off I had one of the most pleasant customer service people on the line I've ever worked with. She was great, it took a few days but yesterday I got word that she would be deleting both Chase trade lines from my report which is fantastic.
One of those lines had a collection on it that had already been removed, however one of the cards was sold to midland *mumbles*. They were already reporting a 0 balance closed on 2 of the 3 CRA's but now I can complete remove them as well hopefully *YAY*
------- Comcast
I reached out to Comcast's "recovery" department because the regular reps couldnt even find the account that was being reported to collections.
Eventually they found it and told me the $$ were for equipment that was "not returned". This account was from 2009! I've moved multiple times and had comcast service the entire time and not once was this issue ever mentioned... After explaining that to the Rep on the phone i was given an "investigation ticket" and they would "look for the hardware in the warehouse" REALLY?! it was 4 years ago, the hardware isn't even used anymore! ...
anyway i was told to call back a week later for a status, which is did. You know what i way told at that point? Oh yes... It would be 2 more weeks... and "they dont know why i was told a week, these normally take at least 3 weeks" but I could happily pay the 1100 and put the issue to bed... HAH! I think not.
Off to the BBB I go! (didn't even need it though!)
An hour after i file the BBB complaint I find the comcast executive office phone number so I give them a call and explain the situation. After going back and forth a bit they agreed to credit the equipment fees but not the extra service changes because they didn't cancel the account properly.
I decided yeah screw it I'll pay it providing they'd remove the collection. Well I was told "they'd update the collection to the correct amount"
HAH! No, no no... .So argued a bit more about the logic of them agreeing they screwed up on the hardware return and why would I leave an account open and billable without hardware to use it?! and if I wasn't going to get the benifit of having the collection removed completely I'd happily keep fighting them on it. (very politely i might add which is not my normal style)
So the next day (today) I get a call saying, "Good morning! I have great news for you, I've managed to get the collection completely removed and the debt is completely wiped out because there was just too many unexplained loose ends on my account." So comcast did the right thing and are completely removing the collection and credited my account $50 for the hassles.
Kudos to them, I thought I'd be paying the collection and moving to fios but looks like I'm sticking around
---- AFNI
One of the verizon collections, was settled for about 25% of the bill. Once the check cleared and I knew it was paid a week later I called and asked for it to be removed and they did ... that was easy! hahah
I still got a few things to clean up, but there are no lates 3 years now, no judgements, collections and only 1-2 accounts that are charge-off and still need to update . I figured once the tax lein is completely removed along with the comcast other pending updates things should jump pretty nicely.
fun fun.
-d
