I've been doing a lot of research for quite some time now, and still feel completely lost with what I should be doing to improve my score. Unfortunately for the most part, several of my accounts I settled for lesser amounts without doing PFD so now they just sit there as collections paid for less. I still haven't paid an AT&T collection, and theres one other on my account that I disputed with the CA that an apartment complex hired to collect on, and shows "consumer disputes this information" and it's been that way for about a year. I live in Texas so the SOL is up in October, so I'm considering taking action in November on that account.
Question 1) Right now my equifax score is 581. There are 3 collections: 1 is the apartment complex, 1 is the AT&T collection, and 1 is a settled debt. If I was to get a PFD with the CA on the AT&T bill, would that help my credit since it's been about 4 years, as I will still have 2 other collections on my account. One may possibly be able to come off but that still leaves the other, that would only come off from GW which is an HSBC account.
Question 2) I read somewhere that I should send a DV on the account that was settled so perhaps they don't bother sending anything back since it is paid. Is that a possible way to get it removed, much less an ethical way?
Question 3) I've opened a secured credit card about a year ago and it's helped my credit go up about 30 points, but I'm confused a bit by how the credit scoring works on it. Does your credit build faster if you keep it at 9% utilization? Like say for instance one month I used it and it reported about 50% which lowered my credit score some. Now would me paying it back down to 9% equal the same as if I had kept it at 9% the whole time? Kind of a confusing question, let me know if I need to reword that.
Question 4) I know I have an upaid electric bill out there somewhere but it doesn't show up on any of my credit reports. I'm planning on moving into a new place at the end of the year and dont want that to show up anywhere so I'd like to get it taken care of but I can't find it any where. Is there any other place they that would show up other than my credit report?
Question 5) Would it be more beneficial for me to open another secured card, 2 total, to help build my on-time payments more quickly?
Question 6) When I do start to take action on that apartment collection, the total amount that is due right now is roughly around $1800. The apartment complex voided my written cancellation notice after my roomate didn't go to their office and sign it, so I feel the only thing I owe them is a halfs months rent as the requirements for getting out of the contract was 2 months notice, and then pay a halfs months rent. I paid the 2 months, but not the half month as they said it wasn't going to do anything at the time as I still owed 2 more months. They never informed me about voiding the cancellation. I don't want to have to pay the full amount, much less pay taxes on a reduced amount for them "settling" the account.
Question 7) When writing GW's is it better to send multiple letters to different people in the company or just send them one at a time? Does emailing GW's ever work, or calling them?
That's all I can think of at the moment so I'll add some more as they come to me.
