I need some serious advice....

[Anonymous]

I'm very new to this so work with me. 

First off I have terrible, terrible, terrible credit

Here is the list of all the negatives on my CR. 

-Collection from 08 for $387 

-Collection from 09 for $954 Cap One CC

-Collection from 07 says paid but still on my report?

- Collection 08 for $247 (Cable bill)

- Collection 09 fpr $1824 (Family Cell Phone Bill, Nobody paid their bill and i get stuck with the damage)

So my question is I know that I can pay the $247, and $387 collection but I don't know how to pay it? 

Need advice fpr the Cap One and the Cell Phone Bill...

Thanks in advance for everyone advice! 

[Anonymous]

Before you ever pay a collection agency (CA), there are a few things you need to know:

• Never speak to a collection agency on the phone.  Their goal is to lie, harass, and threatened you (basically scare the heck out of you) so that you make an immediate payment on the phone to them right there.

• Do all of your negotiations by mail.  Mail everything Certified Return Receipt (CRR).  It will cost you $5.59 in total to mail it. Save all of your letters and receipts.

• Before beginning negotiations with a collection agency, send them a debt validation (DV) request first by mail.   Under  FDCPA law you have a right to request them to validated.  Basically you are asking them to prove that they legally own the debt, that they are registered to collect in your state.  They should also provide you with a payment history so you can see the first date of delinquency.  This date will be important because of SOL (statue of limitations).  Find out the SOL in your state. 

• Once the CA validates, mail them an offer letter for a certain percentage.  Your negation with them should include what action you want taken on your credit report; either the trade line from your credit report (I do that with ones I had serious delinquencies on) or you want them to mark it paid in full.

Sometimes one letter doesn’t work, you have to send several letters.  

When you begin your journey on improving credit the most important thing to do is to make sure to NEVER use a credit card if you don’t already have money in the bank to cover it.  Once you get you bill in the mail pay it off in full immediately.  If you can’t pay in full make sure to keep the utilization on your credit cards low.  Keeping your balances under 30% will really help.  Keeping them under 10% is even better.

Learn how to begin and keep a financial budget.  I like Dave Ramsey’s views and followed some of his procedures to getting out of debt.  I don’t believe in his 100% extremeisim so I tweaked his program to fit my needs.  He also doesn’t believe in Credit Scores or up keeping credit reports (because his goal is that you always use cash for purchases for the rest of your life) however I want to buy a house soon and houses here in NYC are $500K, I definitely will need a mortgage.

[Guava]

Hi, I don't know specifically how you could pay your collections, but I would like to say that before paying, it doesn't hurt to send a letter to the collection agency offering Pay for Deletion. If they agreed in writing, after you paid your debts, the collection account would be deleted from your credit report, so it won't hurt your score any longer.

[RobertEG]

I would certainly send a DV letter to get the debt collector to validate the debt, but the DV letter does not compel them to "prove" that you owe the debt, or to provide you with any OC account verification of your DOFD.  While what constitues proper debt validation is, due the vaugeness of the statute, ultimately an issue for determination by the courts, prevailing case law in most jurisdictions is that a simple contact with the OC, and affirmation that the debt is valid, is all that is needed.  I would not rely on the DV process to conduct legal discovery from the debt collector unless you are prepared to enter into a legal dispute over the issue of what constitutes proper debt validation.

Additionally, if your DV is not sent within 30-days after you received collection notice from the debt collector, they can continue their collection activities, and just ignore your DV letter.

If information in your CR is inaccurate, the FCRA dispute process is the remedy.