Is this hurting me?

[smoop88]

I had an account with dressbarn. The cashier that opened the account for me got the card sent to a wrong address. I never recieved the card or any statements. I disputed this information and I paid it. However, it says open on my EQ is this hurting me should I request it say "closed" it has been closed and paid btw.

[Anonymous]

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@smoop88 wrote:

I had an account with dressbarn. The cashier that opened the account for me got the card sent to a wrong address. I never recieved the card or any statements. I disputed this information and I paid it. However, it says open on my EQ is this hurting me should I request it say "closed" it has been closed and paid btw.

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You can dispute the open status, but I believe that with a $0 balance on it, it won't make a difference.

[IncrsCreditScore1]

@NormanFH:  In reponse you stated:  "You can dispute the open status, but I believe that with a $0 balance on it, it won't make a difference."

When I had a charge off, the balance owed showed 0 because the balance had been charged off and the account sold to a collection agency.  However, the collection agency showed a balance owed.  I am still learning about this world of personal finances.  My question is if the credit was charged off, wouldn't the balance show as zero?

[RobertEG]

A charge-off is only an internal accounting measure that moves the debt from the assets column of the creditor books, thus preventing them from overstating their real assets.

No, the taking of a CO does not result in the creditor reporting a $0 balance to the CRAs.

The full debt is still due and collectible.

As for the status as Open or Closed, I concur with Norman that it is not substantive.

Any credit card that has reached the stage of being charged-off has been closed by the creditor to futher use by the consumer in order to prevent increase in the bad debt that they have determined will not be paid.  If you atttempt to use the card, it will assuredly be rejected.

You can dispute and have the status updated to Closed, but it is an obvious admin update that will have no scoring or other substnative impact.

The only way it would be "hurting" is if a party pulls only that one credit report, and thus might be confused as to whehter the account is currently in use after the CO.

[Anonymous]

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@IncrsCreditScore wrote:

@Anonymous:  In reponse you stated:  "You can dispute the open status, but I believe that with a $0 balance on it, it won't make a difference."

When I had a charge off, the balance owed showed 0 because the balance had been charged off and the account sold to a collection agency.  However, the collection agency showed a balance owed.  I am still learning about this world of personal finances.  My question is if the credit was charged off, wouldn't the balance show as zero?

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Charged off does not mean the debt is discharged or that it has been sold. It only means they have moved it off of their "assets" ledger and onto the "expected losses" ledger for accounting purposes. At that point it can still show a balance. The balance generally will only go to zero when they actually sell the bad debt to a junk debt buyer. Often they will hold the debt for years, letting in-house collections work on it, before selling it off.

[IncrsCreditScore1]

Thank you, Robert and Norman.  I love learning from all of you forum contributors.  The learning has resulted in my having current scores nearing 800 from CRAs.  I want to keep learning and love your sharing such great information.

[CJ7]

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@smoop88 wrote:

 The cashier that opened the account for me got the card sent to a wrong address. I never recieved the card or any statements. I disputed this information and I paid it.

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If this happened to me, I'd send Comenity a letter asking for a GW deletion.

Explain what happened, along with a copy of something that shows your correct address.

Likely the numeric part of your address got transposed by the cashier and they can quickly pick that fact up via their records.