topic Re: The Saturation Technique: Best GW adjustment odds. in Rebuilding Your Credit

The Saturation Technique: Best GW adjustment odds.

Anonymous — Tue, 06 Sep 2016 13:11:53 GMT

I've wrote about this in numerous threads over the months and have received PMs from people either asking for additional info or thanking me for the advice so I figured I'd start a thread on it that hopefully many others will find with search hits in the future. I've been able to obtain goodwill adjustment success with several creditors/lenders using this method when many others have fallen short with the same institutions.

"The Saturation Technique" as I've named it has one purpose and one purpose only: Get your goodwill letter into as many unique hands as possible. The greater the number of people that read your GW letter, the greater the chance you have of one of those people making a positive adjustment for you.

I see this without question being a numbers game; The more darts you throw the greater your chances are of hitting a bullseye.

The information contained in this thread already assumes you've written the best possible GW letter that you can. There are plenty of threads on myFICO describing the best ways to write successful GW letters so I won't take up any time here going into any of that. Under the assumption that you've got your masterclass GW letter in hand, ready to send, this is what I feel everyone should do to yield the greatest possible probability of a favorable result.

Start by searching for as many snail mail addresses as you can find for the institution that you're targeting. You should quite easily be able to come up with 3-4 in just a few minutes and after digging for a bit can probably find at least 6-7. You are looking for any addresses associated with your target institution. It doesn't matter if your account is a credit card and it's the auto division of the institution or if it's your mortgage and the address you found is the business division. Remember, your goal here is to get your letter into as many different hands as possible. The bigger the institution, the more addresses you'll likely come across. I know nothing about Bank of America as I have no accounts with them at all, but I just searched for 5 minutes on them while writing this thread and found 12 unique addresses for them; I'm confident if I invested more time I could come up with quite a few more.

When you find these addresses cut and paste them into a Word Doc or memo pad so that they are saved and you don't have to search them out again in the future when you need them. And, there's a strong chance you will need them again

Next print off as many copies of your letter as you found addresses. Fill out all your envelopes, sign all your letters, stuff them and send them out on a Monday. Why a Monday? We'll get to that later. We'll refer to this as sending out your first "Round." I define a "Round" as a batch of identical letters sent to as many worthwhile addresses as you can find. On a calendar somewhere make note of the Monday that you sent out Round 1. If you just sent out 10 letters you have 10 times the chance of success of someone more typical that may just send out 1. You should feel very good about this. Next, sit back and wait for Round 1 to do its thing.

All institutions are different, so it's difficult to estimate what type of response you may get. What I've found, generally speaking, is that I get a response back roughly 1/3 of the time. If Round 1 contained 10 letters, you could expect to receive back 3-4 responses on average. The others will likely go unanswered. Your typical responses will be unfavorable; most contain some variation of a denial to your request. Keep your chin up, though. There's always Round 2. On any response letters you receive, take note of the address it came from. Often you'll receive a response from a different address than one of the ones you sent your Round to. If this happens, add this address to your personal database so that your next Round is now greater than your previous. Also make note of the name of the individual that sent the response to you. If this person seemed to offer a more favorable response while still offering up a denial, it could be beneficial to target them specifically in your next Round by addressing something ATTN: Their Name. While you may not get a fish that bites, you may get one that nibbles and it's often easier to get future bites from a previous nibbler

Typically you'll receive any responses that you're going to get within 2-3 weeks of sending out a Round; I've never received any sort of response greater than a month after sending out a Round. For this reason, I suggest waiting approximately 1 month between Rounds. During this month feel free to make some tweaks to your GW letter, perhaps taking a different angle on it based on further research in this forums. Also during this month look to add any additional addresses to your database in preparation for you next Round. You can also customize a response letter to anyone that sent you a denial letter that offered any slight ray of hope. Start that letter by sincerely thanking them for taking the time to respond to you the first time around and conclude it with how you look forward to their response. Many have found that by establishing a "relationship" with someone that nibbles at some point they are able to get them to bite after a couple of Rounds.

Round 2: Do everything you did the first time around, this time just add any additional addresses. Remember, "The Saturation Technique" has a goal of getting your letters into unique hands. Chances are if the same individuals that opened Round 1 open Round 2 you aren't going to yield much of a different result. For this reason, you're going to send Round 2 on a Thursday. Chances are that Round 1 entered the hands of those reading your letters sometime mid-week. By sending Round 2 on Thursday, there's a strong chance that a good portion of your letters will be received on Saturday. Since many people that work during the week don't work on weekends you have a greater chance of Round 2 making it into different hands if you mail them all out on a Thursday. Again on a calendar, make note of the Thursday that you sent out Round 2 which should be roughly 1 month after Round 1 was sent (within a few days).

Round 3 and subsequent rounds: The same as previous rounds, only mailed on a different day of the week. Obviously once Round 6 is complete you've exhausted all days of the week. Keep track on your calendar which days of the week you use so that you don't duplicate any until you need to.

Note: If you come up with very similar addresses for your institution (same zip code) such as different P.O. boxes that are all just a couple of digits off, I suggest not mailing any of those letters on the same day. For example, Synchrony Bank has 5 different P.O. boxes that I know of all in Orlando, FL. For all I know, one individual opens all of these P.O. boxes at the same time, meaning one person could obtain 5 copies of your letter from a single Round which goes against the purpose of The Saturation Technique. In these situations I recommend mailing out your entire Round except for those letters that have similar addresses, and then mail each of those letters out 1 per day (starting on the day your Round goes out) every day until they are gone. This way there's a greater probability of someone else getting the mail on a different day, meaning your letter gets into a different set of hands.

That's it, in a nutshell.

I'd also like to convey that snail mail is not the only means of using this technique. By all means if you'd like to work email addresses into your database and use those each Round please do so. Like snail mail addresses, email addresses are quite plentiful when doing internet searches. Phone calls have also worked for some, but I'm personally not a big fan of the phone as there is no written record of any correspondence.

Hopefully this information is useful to some of you today and in the future. If anyone has any feedback or suggestions to further improve The Saturation Technique it would be welcomed with open arms as it can only increase the odds for those looking to achieve goodwill adjustments going forward.

Re: Best GW adjustment odds; "The Saturation Technique."

Anonymous — Fri, 02 Sep 2016 16:27:09 GMT

What a great plan!!!
Fantastic.
My first attempt at GW with Toyota returned standard letters but I think I will resend as a real Round 1 because of this post.

So excited

Re: Best GW adjustment odds; "The Saturation Technique."

Anonymous — Fri, 02 Sep 2016 19:28:31 GMT

Awesome, good luck! How many addresses have you come up with for them so far?

Re: Best GW adjustment odds; "The Saturation Technique."

Anonymous — Fri, 02 Sep 2016 20:56:03 GMT

Hmmm none so far. - I'm at work. Lol
I sent 3 letters prior and of course I didn't save any address (newbie problems). I was tentative regarding addressing a letter to the CEO because of the 'nowhere else to go' factor but from what you said it is volume!

Re: Best GW adjustment odds; "The Saturation Technique."

Anonymous — Sat, 03 Sep 2016 08:12:30 GMT

Like any other letters, a letter addressed to the CEO will be opened by someone other than the CEO... so it must be treated like any other letter in any given Round. Whoever opens the CEO's mail on Wednesday may not be the same person that opens it on Saturday, so sending letters to the CEO on different days of the week could potentially result in getting your letters into different hands

Re: Best GW adjustment odds; "The Saturation Technique."

Anonymous — Sat, 03 Sep 2016 18:24:24 GMT

Great post man, thank you for sharing your technique.

I'm going to try this with cap 1 for a few lates last year.

Re: Best GW adjustment odds; "The Saturation Technique."

Anonymous — Sat, 03 Sep 2016 21:19:31 GMT

BBB

I have a 30 day late with a small company. There's only one physical address that I can find. And a found 3-4 'exec's. What do you recommend ?

Re: Best GW adjustment odds; "The Saturation Technique."

Anonymous — Sun, 04 Sep 2016 02:52:59 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Great post man, thank you for sharing your technique.

I'm going to try this with cap 1 for a few lates last year.

Nice, good luck! Be sure to report back in here. I know that Cap One can be a fairly difficult company to receive GW success from, but there ARE a good amount of success stories mixed in as well. I'm also fairly certain that you could come up with quite a few addresses for Cap One and I'd be curious to hear of how many you can find prior to sending out Round 1.

Re: Best GW adjustment odds; "The Saturation Technique."

Anonymous — Sun, 04 Sep 2016 02:59:42 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
BBB

I have a 30 day late with a small company. There's only one physical address that I can find. And a found 3-4 'exec's. What do you recommend ?

That's a good question. Care to share the name of the small company and I could do a little searching as well? When you say you found 3-4 exec's do you mean email addresses? You could also use social media to contact them as well as that's another way of putting your letter into a new, unique set of hands.

You could also try to solicit some more snail mail addresses by calling them and asking. Say you want to send a letter to the CEO and would like to know the best address to use. Then over the course of several other calls you could try to solicit other addresses by coming up with other bogus stories... like you want to send in a compliment regarding a CS rep to someone higher up... where should you mail it? Or you want to mail in a payment this month, where should you send it. Or you think you may have found an error on your credit report but before filing a dispute would like to mail in a copy of what you found to have it reviewed. Who knows, lots of different reasons I'm sure you could come up with that could possibly yield additional addresses.

Re: Best GW adjustment odds; "The Saturation Technique."

Anonymous — Sun, 04 Sep 2016 04:25:25 GMT

My word! Those are great ideas. I will PM the name of the company.

Also....my initial 3 letters to Toyota yielded success!!
1 of 2 30-day lates was removed!!! They cited company policy yadda yadda yadda. Boy does it feel good to have at least one off. 😀😀😀😀

When the other company GW (I'm being optimistic) I think I can live with on 30-day.

Lesson learned no more blind co-signing ever.

Re: Best GW adjustment odds; "The Saturation Technique."

Anonymous — Sun, 04 Sep 2016 13:54:12 GMT

Great to hear you found success with Toyota!

I responded to your PM as well.

The good news that I've found is that if you achieve GW success from a creditor once on an account, 9 times out of 10 you can achieve it again with the same account. You've already found that your GW letter works, you found that their "policy" allows for adjustments, and you found an individual willing to work with you. Really, this is all you need to come up with a second adjustment.

You could send a letter ATTN: the person that did the first adjustment for you in a month or so sincerely thanking them for removing the one late payment and telling them how much it would mean to you to have the other one removed thus making your account perfect. Tell them that you're thinking of getting another Toyota (a new loan) and you'd love to continue being a profitable customer for them for years to come, but you're apprehensive in applying for another loan with that one black mark still on your account with them. This will give them more incentive to make another adjustment for you.

While it certainly does feel good to get 1 late payment removed, remember that the account is still seen as "negative" if it possesses even a single delinquency; your goal should still be to make it 100% clean. Also the first delinquency always carries the most adverse impact to your scores, so getting the one removed may have helped your scores some but getting the final one removed will help even more

Re: The Saturation Technique: Best GW adjustment odds.

Anonymous — Tue, 06 Sep 2016 18:03:25 GMT

Hi.
Thanks for your insight. I will be trying this out and I'll post about my progress.

Would you recommend sending GW to a credit union with multiple bank locations in a particular area?

Re: The Saturation Technique: Best GW adjustment odds.

Anonymous — Tue, 06 Sep 2016 21:13:38 GMT

Absolutely. Remember, the goal is to get your letter into as many unique hands as possible. The more addresses you send it to, the better your odds are going to be based on the numbers game.

The biggest credit union in my area has about 10 locations within a 30-45 minute drive from where I live. If my goal was to obtain a GW adjustment from them, you can be assured that included in my database of addresses would be those 10 locations

Re: The Saturation Technique: Best GW adjustment odds.

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Sep 2016 18:57:18 GMT

Awesome! Thanks a lot.

Re: The Saturation Technique: Best GW adjustment odds.

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Sep 2016 19:44:50 GMT

BBB

If the company had several addresses would you address the GW letters to the same person but at different addresses? For example CEO at address A then CEO at address B etc

Re: The Saturation Technique: Best GW adjustment odds.

Anonymous — Fri, 09 Sep 2016 00:59:02 GMT

No, I'd only address one to the CEO at the address of the CEO headquarters. All of the other ones really could contain the same salutation, either "To Whom It May Concern:" or "Dear Sir or Madam" - anything generic that would make sense regardless of who opens the letter.

The only time aside from the CEO that I've addressed letters to anyone specific was when replying to someone that sent me a denial to one of my letters from a previous Round. Over time you end up compiling a decent list of names. I've received probably 10 denials from 10 different people from one creditor, so I've got those 10 names in my database where all 10 came from only 3-4 addresses. This way if I fire off 3 letters to the same address but put ATTN (name) on each one to a different person I can be fairly confident that those 3 different people will open the mail addressed to them.

Re: The Saturation Technique: Best GW adjustment odds.

Anonymous — Fri, 09 Sep 2016 19:01:10 GMT

So today I sent out Round 7 to Wells Fargo and I definitely upped the stakes as this round included 26 letters; this is the most I've ever sent in a single round. We'll see how it goes. I did not receive any replies at all to Round 6 unfortunately, which isn't surprising as several replies to Round 5 stated that going forward they wouldn't reply unless I raised a new concern and they consider my GW adjustment concern addressed at this point.

By increasing the size of this round substantially I'm confident that I'll find several new sets of eyes for my letters, so I'm still hopeful

Re: The Saturation Technique: Best GW adjustment odds.

Anonymous — Thu, 15 Sep 2016 18:30:37 GMT

Guess what!!!!!!
Goodwill Letter worked. Woo Hoo!!
Now only the 2nd Toyota 30 day late.

Re: The Saturation Technique: Best GW adjustment odds.

Anonymous — Thu, 15 Sep 2016 23:22:40 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Guess what!!!!!!
Goodwill Letter worked. Woo Hoo!!
Now only the 2nd Toyota 30 day late.

Awesome! Glad to hear you had success! You can try sending a letter to the person that gave you the first adjustment sincerely thanking them for it and then asking them if they could find it within to make 1 more adjustment for you. Sometimes it can work since you've already established a relationship with them.

Re: The Saturation Technique: Best GW adjustment odds.

Anonymous — Fri, 16 Sep 2016 03:45:50 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
So today I sent out Round 7 to Wells Fargo and I definitely upped the stakes as this round included 26 letters; this is the most I've ever sent in a single round. We'll see how it goes. I did not receive any replies at all to Round 6 unfortunately, which isn't surprising as several replies to Round 5 stated that going forward they wouldn't reply unless I raised a new concern and they consider my GW adjustment concern addressed at this point.

By increasing the size of this round substantially I'm confident that I'll find several new sets of eyes for my letters, so I'm still hopeful

I think this method can work for early adopters. Like a chain email, if and when "enough" people do this, companies will institute policies to ignore/decline all GW letters.

So make the most of it now!