Feel stalemated by a few creditors and confused

[daddyheatly]

We are desperately trying to clean up my husbands credit report after a few years of unemployment and temporary jobs. He had credit issues when we were married seven years ago. I went through a few creditor judgements I didn't know about but managed our finances to pay. Those judgments are about to clear off thank goodness but I'm having an issue with more recent credit issues which we didn't even know existed.

The first charge off was for a job related expense my husband had. He was hired by this company in 2012 and they required he have these special safety glassed to wear with a respirator. The HR set up an appointment for him with the companies eye doctor and he got the goggles. Well fast forward a month they hired some younger kids to replace the older guys and gave them the boot. A few months after that we started getting notices about the cost for the eye doctor. He called his late employer and left messages but no one ever responded. He called the creditor and they told us they got the collection from the eye doctor. So he contacted the eye doctor who told that his previous employed had denied payment and that it was my husbands personal debt. Finally at the beginning of this year after a solid week of message leaving again he was told that they have a new hr person that handles that stuff and according to her they do not pay for personal equipment anymore. We don't even have the goggles because they would be useless because they were job specific equipment anyway! What makes me even more frustrated is it's only $100 and went to collections before we had a chance to pay it because we were told. And it's stuck on his credit report.

The next creditor is from a property management company from a place in 2007. They are trying to get us for over $300 for a prorated month of rent from when we moved out and a cleaning deposit that is automatically applied. We never received anything in the mail or a phone call from the property and didn't even know there was a balance until 2010 when we received a letter from a collection agency after we had moved out from living there a second time while getting back on our feet. I talked to the collector but like all collections they said I had to speak to the property management company and have them send a letter saying we do not owe the debt. So we contacted the property manager who had only been there a few months and they said they would look into it and get back to us. Well they didn't and it is hard as everything to contact these people in office because they manage more than one property. So by the time we actually contacted someone there was another new property manager! I personally know we don't owe these fees since the manager at the time waived our cleaning fee, it was noted in our file because when we moved in I had to clean everything myself. There were food crumbs, dirt and mess all over so she had told us when we moved out that we were good. As for the prorated month rent I had notified the manager before 30 days and the manager told me to bring it in writing but we were good. So I did have a letter submitted about intent to move and when we moved out we were told we were paid in full. Unfortunately 7 years later I don't have my receipts anymore. I didn't even know there was a debt since we moved back into the apts a few years later when the economy went bad and we lost major income. They pulled nothing up in our credit history or file then, no delinquencies on our file at all! But as of right now these people are not getting us anywhere!!!

So what do I do now? Can I just dispute it with the Credit Agencies or do I have to do something first? I'll be honest the whole credit report and fico score monitoring is really new to me. We have been trying to get our financial ducks in a row by paying our debts on time, we opened up a few credit and store cards to get credit accounts moving and reestablish our credit. So far I've manage to move him from the middle to low 500's  all up into the 611, 659, 608 ranges in six months. I'm happy we are making progress and getting cli's but keeping our balances low or paying off every month. But every time I check the reports I see those two stupid collections on there and just want to know if there is anything more I can do except maybe pay them off? But I have been told by others that will restart the time it stays on the report and it will stay on there anyway. Any advice or experiences that might help us? Thanks in advance.

[Anonymous]

hello and welcome. You may want to post this info in the rebuilding area for the most replies. What is the DOFD on the apartment collection? You mentioned 7 years ago so it should be very close to falling off. If so, you can call the CRA's and ask for early exclusion. TU is particularly good with this. The othe collection sounds newer and my suggestion would be to contact the CA ask ask for a PFD-Pay For Delete. You pay them after they agree to delete from your reports. My other suggestion is to go to the rebuilding forum and read. there is so much great info there. The new accounts you have that you keep current are a great step in improving scores. Good luck.

[RobertEG]

When you dispute the legitimacy of a debt, which is apparently your situation, it becomes a contested matter that usually requires involvment of a court to get the issue resolved on the merits.

Filing of either a DV request or a dispute requires the debt collector or creditor to investigate and report their finding to you or to the CRA.

They are not required to provide their documenttion, and there is no party in either process to review the evidence and positions of each side and make a binding determination.

Absent bring legal action contesting the debt, the best you can do is to attempt to work out a settlement with them.

If, in the case of the eyeglasses issue,  the original debt involved in securing the glasses was stated at that time to be covered by the employer, the fact that their policy now is that it is no longer covered would be irrelevant.  Perhaps simply bringing legal action would result in their agreement that t he debt is not his.

I would consult an attorney with an eye towrds initiating a suit.

As for the lease issues, have you contacted the pertinent tenant-landlord commission and determined their legal responsibilities under your rental agreement?