How bad are these oldies affecting my credit?

[RW771]

Hi gang,

I pulled my free credit reports earlier just to see where I'm at with everything since cleaning up quite a bit of stuff on my CR's this past year. The 4 baddies I have left and exhausted all attempts are still there but set to fall off (hopefully) all within the next 1-2.5 yrs. Here is what is left:

1. GECRB/SAMS - scheduled to fall off 06/2013 (PIF chargeoff)

2. GECRB/Walmart - doesn't give an approx. date but guessing between 11/2013 - 01/2014 (PIF chargeoff)

3. Equidata - scheduled to fall off 07/2014 (PIF collection)

4. Certified Collectors (medical) - scheduled to fall off 07/2014 (PIF collection)

As you can see, all have been PIF. I have sent GW's until I received a "kiss my butt" straight from the top from all 4. So needless to say, I've exhausted any further attempts on these. The rest of my credit looks pretty good and I just bought my first home back in Dec! My question is, how bad are these old CO's and paid collections affecting my score? I keep thinking there's something I can still do to work on these, but I really don't know what else I can do from here?

[RobertEG]

If the debt was accurate and paid, then GW is about your only recourse.  The system is set up to accurately reflect prior credit history, and deletion of accurate information is normally considered as negatively affecting the integrity (!) of the credit reporting system. So much so that the CRAs have a published policy reflected in all their reporting agreements that furnishers are not to delete based on payment of a debt.  Thus, requests for such deletions normally require grant of an exception by someone in management.

If you have gone up the chain with no success, just keep trying.  There may still be a wooden desk out there that has compassion.

The postive side, apart from credit scoring, is that inclusion in your file that the debt was paid, particularly in full, looks very good upon any manual review of your credit file.

Potential creditors dont like to see indications that the consumer has failed to pay prior debt.