topic Re: Settle for Less than Full Amount in Rebuilding Your Credit

Settle for Less than Full Amount

Longroad — Fri, 31 Jan 2014 17:28:56 GMT

4 years ago I settled with a credit card company for less than the full amount and it is showing up on my credit reports as such. I was just wondering if anyone had any experience with approaching them and offering to pay the written-off portion for a deletion? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Re: Settle for Less than Full Amount

Burned2manybridgesB4 — Fri, 31 Jan 2014 17:37:23 GMT

GW letters are more receptive when baddies are paid in full, but have you tried GW'ing them even though it's only settled?

Re: Settle for Less than Full Amount

RobertEG — Fri, 31 Jan 2014 17:39:54 GMT

If they accepted payment as satisfaction of the debt, regardless of the amount paid, the remaining debt is cancelled.

Thus, you are offering to pay a fee for credit report deletion.

How a party can legally accept a payment that is not owed to them is very questionable.

Additionally, the CRA policy is that a furnisher should not delete prior reporting based on payment of a debt. Their obligation not to delete is thus based on their business agreement with the CRA, regardless of your offer to pay a fee for deletion. I would suspect that jeopardizing thier credit reporting ability with the CRAs would be a serious consideration on their part.

However, the very fact that debt collectors will do PFDs shows that they sometines put greed above other business responsibiliies.....

It might be interesting to see their reply......

Re: Settle for Less than Full Amount

Longroad — Fri, 31 Jan 2014 18:01:54 GMT

@Burned2manybridgesB4 wrote:
GW letters are more receptive when baddies are paid in full, but have you tried GW'ing them even though it's only settled?

Yes I have tried that........they haven't even acknowledged receipt of my letters.

Re: Settle for Less than Full Amount

Longroad — Fri, 31 Jan 2014 18:02:46 GMT

@RobertEG wrote:
If they accepted payment as satisfaction of the debt, regardless of the amount paid, the remaining debt is cancelled.
Thus, you are offering to pay a fee for credit report deletion.
How a party can legally accept a payment that is not owed to them is very questionable.

Additionally, the CRA policy is that a furnisher should not delete prior reporting based on payment of a debt. Their obligation not to delete is thus based on their business agreement with the CRA, regardless of your offer to pay a fee for deletion. I would suspect that jeopardizing thier credit reporting ability with the CRAs would be a serious consideration on their part.

However, the very fact that debt collectors will do PFDs shows that they sometines put greed above other business responsibiliies.....
It might be interesting to see their reply......

That was my thought exactly, I was basing the idea on the PFD strategy used with CAs.

Re: Settle for Less than Full Amount

Longroad — Fri, 31 Jan 2014 19:37:34 GMT

Could you pay the charged off amount for the OC to change the status to something besides "settled for less than full amount"? Wouldn't that be scored more positively?