Hello everyone,
I hope I am able to receive some help from this forum. Here is a little background info before I tell you guys my problem here.
I am 25 years old and have been living on my own for 2.5 years.
I tried applying for a credit card almost 2 years ago to "build my credit" but got denied- I assumed it was because I had "no credit." The bank suggested I get a "secured card" which I did. I have never made a late payment. It has been a year and half and it is still a secure credit card even though they told me after a year, if all went well, I would get my money back and get a "real" credit card. (I'm not bothered by that though). I then heard from a coworker that his credit score went up when he got "a few" credit cards so I thought to apply for another one a year after having my secured card to see if that would help my score go up. I got approved for a Captial One card with a limit of $300, never made a late payment and after about 4 months or so I got an email saying balance was increased to $500 which I took as a sign that I'm doing good.
As far as I was concerned these were the only two things on my credit.
Well this year my fiance and I were wanting to buy a house and I was very saddened to see a few things on my report that were in collections.
- I have about 3 medical bills in collections. I blame this on being young, stupid, and uneducated. I have been to the ER a few times and have gotten lab work xrays from doctors over the years. I have always asked if there is a copay and paid. I was under my fathers insurance up until I was 24. I was unaware that I would end up getting billed for these things, I was young & uneducated and thought that if I had insurance through my dad that everything would be paid. I do not remember ever getting bills for these things, but again, I was young and stupid and didn't really pay attention to my mail. I don't know what to do about this but am I willing to pay them all if this will help my credit, bu\t what steps do I need to take, just call the collections and ask them to delete
- Almost two years ago, one month after moving into an apartment together, my fiance was the victim of aggravated robbery and thankfuly he only suffered broken teeth, but the people who tried to shoot him ended up actually shooting a parked car inside the complex. The apartment complex ended up evicting us because they said we were a danger to the neighbors and had caused damage to another residents car. It was my first time living away from home, it was a very traumatizing situation we were in and had to move out in a day because I was unaware if we could "fight" that or not. We had internet & cable as part of our bill in the apartments. Since we were only there a little over a month and had paid our rent + the difference for the days we were there before we got evicted, I did not think anything of the internet and cable. Fast forward almost two years later to now, like I said we are wanting to buy a house and on a copy of my credit report I see I have a collection with the original creditor being Grande Communications. I have no idea what this is for or why if I was under the impression that that was part of our bill for the apartment complex and I have nothing from the apartment complex in collections, I thought we had paid them what we needed to. I have never received a bill from Grande. The collection is about $250 and thankfully we are doing good right now and agian, have no problem paying this off if will be taken off my credit but now that I am trying to do research I have read that things can be disputed, and I am wondering if this is something I can dispute and how?
Any help and advice is greatly appreciated.
