I'm new to this, but rather obsessed with raising my credit scores! I'm not sure about all the steps I can take to raise my score, and I'm wondering if one of you with some more experience could give me some advice. I have many accounts --37 on EQ, 41 on one of the others (I can't remember which right now). My report tells me that I hae too many accounts, but everything I read here says not to close accounts just for the sake of closing them. Many are store accounts that I opened to get a free gift that day or something like that. Many of them are closed now, and on either TU or EX 2 of them report as "unrated or bankruptcy" I have never filed for bankruptcy and have nothing showing up as collections or judgments or anything like that. My scores are: 669 (EX) 676 (EQ) and 711 (TU). My only baddies are several (15 to 22 depending on the CRA) 30 days late on some accounts, the most recent being january 2007. I have sent a few GW letters already, have paid off the balance on 5 relatively small accounts, and just sent a check to pay nearly $14,000 on a $32,000 line of credit. I don't see anything that looks wrong on my reports, though I don't even recognize some of the accounts -- probably opened to get a discount on a purchase at the time. My real questions are these:
1. Some of my accounts, however, show that at some point I had a highest balance greater than the credit limit. I don't remember going over the credit limit, and suspect that at one point I had a higher credit limit than I currently have. While these accounts are paid off or current now, should I do something to change that? Dispute? Ask for verification? Ask for a credit limit increase? Or should I just ignore?
