Goodwill and PFD= disputes??

[Anonymous]

Hi there, 

I've recently begun trying to clean up my credit, and while most of my collections, etc are due to fall off in 2015, I do have two things that are more recent. One is a $189 collection for Credit Collection Services from 2013 (was an old Progressive bill that I forgot to pay when I switched insurance companies- stupid of me). The other was a late payment from July of 2014 for my Navient student loan (actually, that one is reporting as six separate lates for that month because it's six separate loans).

So since these are the most recent things that are hurting me, I decided back in January to send a goodwill letter to Navient and a pay for delete letter to Credit Collection Svcs. I figured it wouldn't hurt to try and the worst that would happen would be that they would say no. Worth a try, right? 

Well, last week I checked my reports through Credit Karma and myFico, and found that not only did neither of those letters work (I wasn't too surprised), but now both of them have a remark that says something to the effect of "consumer disputes account information"! I think my TU report also says "meets FCRA requirements" in addition to the dispute comment on the Navient accounts.

Why? I definitely didn't say anything about disputing in either of the letters. I thought they would either just say yes or no, not put a dispute remark on my accounts. I wish I hadn't sent those letters, because I'm assuming I'm worse off now. What can I do now? Should I write another letter asking them to remove the dispute comments?

As a side note, when this happened, my FICO scores went up about 40 points. That seems very fishy. Why would they go up if something negative was added? It's so confusing.

Anyway, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance!

[Anonymous]

When in dispute status its removed from scoring - hence the score increase.

[Burned2manybridgesB4]

Can you post a template of the letter you sent?

They've interpeted your request as a dispute, so even before I see the letter you used, I'm feeling like it's downloaded off the internet template....and that makes me cringe.

[Anonymous]

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@Burned2manybridgesB4 wrote:

Can you post a template of the letter you sent?

They've interpeted your request as a dispute, so even before I see the letter you used, I'm feeling like it's downloaded off the internet template....and that makes me cringe.

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I hear ya, some of the ones I've seen are pretty horrific. Written by what, when I was in the navy, we referred to as "Sea Lawyers" - guys who could tell you a hundred ways to 'beat the Navy legal system' yet somehow, seldom remained free of trouble themselves.

[newstart2010]

The PFD letter, did you send it in with a payment?  Or did you receive a response saying they were willing to delete if you paid and then you paid?  I am curious as to why you are looking at your credit report tosee if a PFD has been successful.

[Anonymous]

It sure sounds to me like you went through the credit bureaus as a dispute, instead of going direct to Navient.  That is the only way you would see that remark.  They saw it as a dispute and "verified" the account which is why that remark is on there.  When you did that, your scores went up because that account was temporarily "frozen" which means it wasn't included in your scoring model.  Those scores will drop again once they mark the investigation as closed.

If you are requesting a PFD or sending a GW, you need to send those direct to the lender or collection agency.