topic Re: New to rebuilding - need advice please! in Rebuilding Your Credit

New to rebuilding - need advice please!

Anonymous — Tue, 22 May 2018 04:23:12 GMT

Hi everyone~

I have been reading like crazy on this forum for several months now and I have started my rebuild. Thank you in advance to everyone who posts and shares their rich knowledge. I would appreciate some advice on my situation, I just don't know how to proceed now...

I have a number of issues stemming from an abusive ex and a few years of unemployment. Needless to say those things are behind me and I'm in a good place now and making headway with my rebuild. My specific issues are below -- I have wildly varying scores with the bureaus and they all have somewhat different information.

I pay for Experian monitoring and my EX score is currently 625. Via CreditKarma, my TU is 609 and EQ is 665.

1. Up until about a month ago I had a very old (6 years and out of SOL in my state) collection from FCO on my account. I never paid it because it was from an apartment that my ex lived in and put my name on the lease without my conset. Without me doing anything this dropped off from all 3 bureaus in the past 5 weeks. Since the 7 years won't be up until 2019, is it likely to come back or be sold to another collection company? Did they just take it off because its out of SOL? Admin error? What do I do about this now that it's off...but coud potentially return?

2. A big part of my low scores were student loans (5 separate TLs) that were late numerous times due to (mostly) my stupidity with getting forbearance requests in on time. On EX and TU they are all still there and scores haven't changed in the past month but EQ is now stating that I was "never late" and my scores shot up 47 points! However, if you look at the student loans TLs in EQ they still show the lates. It's very confusing. To make things even more messy, all of my active loans were recently sold to another servicer and the old servicer is still reporting the loans as open -- so it looks like I owe double on student loans!!! What should I do here? Dispute that the recently tranferred (and late filled) TLs on the grounds that they are duplicates? I have already disputed lates on these TLs that were legitimately wrong on their part and it wouldn't let me dispute electronically again on EX. Please advise on my next steps guys. I also have GW letters out to the service provider where I was late (ACS/CES) but they responded saying they won't change anything. Do I keep GWing? Dispute? Something else?

3. I also unfortunately have 2 student loan TLs that went to collections that somehow got lost in the shuffle. One is in the process of being rehabbed, it is almost done (July) and the other one only shows on 1 of my credit reports (TU). Since that one was a Perkins loan I was thinking of contacting the school directly to see if I could pay it off with them in a lump sum and be done with it. Would that get that TL deleted or back in good standing then?

4. The last thing I need to do is get my utilization down - its around 40% for my credit cards. That is the "easy" part - I should have them all paid off by end of next month (June).

Thanks in advance everyone!!! I really appreciate your advice.

Re: New to rebuilding - need advice please!

Anonymous — Tue, 22 May 2018 15:03:10 GMT

I have no advice to offer, only good wishes.

Re: New to rebuilding - need advice please!

Anonymous — Wed, 23 May 2018 17:52:12 GMT

anyone have advice for me? I really appreciate it...!

Re: New to rebuilding - need advice please!

Anonymous — Wed, 23 May 2018 18:51:51 GMT

Hi Olivia!

Do you know the DoFD in regards to your first question? I'm guessing it has surpassed the 7 year mark and it has fallen off your reports naturally. The 7 year rule applies to the Date of First Deliquency, not the date it first began reporting. I wouldn't worry about that reappearing. As far your student loans go, I have no good advice as I'm not familiar with them. I do like your idea on the last one about reaching out to the school directly to see if they can help you.

Best of luck and welcome!

Re: New to rebuilding - need advice please!

Anonymous — Thu, 24 May 2018 03:59:49 GMT

@missliz -thank you so much!

To answer your question - the DOFD on the collection was 06/2012. On an old TransUnion report from November 2017, it says:

Remarks: ACCT INFO DISPUTED BY CONSUMR; >PLACED FOR COLLECTION<

Estimated month and year that this item will be removed: 05/2019

So....the way I see it, one of 3 things happened.

1. FCO sold the debt to another collection company (probable?) praying this is not the case.

2. My ex somehow magically settled it and got it deleted off our accounts (a girl can dream, but unlikely)

3. Some kind of weird admin error/grace of god-type situation :-/

Re: New to rebuilding - need advice please!

Anonymous — Thu, 24 May 2018 04:22:40 GMT

I had the same thing happen to me with my student loans in Dec 2017...
In my case, ACS was bought out by Nelnet.
It showed up as double the student loan debt, and i lost 40+/- points on my fico scores.
I disputed it and the error was fixed within 30 days.
ACS now shows as a "transfer account," with zero ballance.
I never got the points back though, which sucked.

Re: New to rebuilding - need advice please!

beutiful5678 — Thu, 24 May 2018 07:45:13 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
2. A big part of my low scores were student loans (5 separate TLs) that were late numerous times due to (mostly) my stupidity with getting forbearance requests in on time. On EX and TU they are all still there and scores haven't changed in the past month but EQ is now stating that I was "never late" and my scores shot up 47 points! However, if you look at the student loans TLs in EQ they still show the lates. It's very confusing. To make things even more messy, all of my active loans were recently sold to another servicer and the old servicer is still reporting the loans as open -- so it looks like I owe double on student loans!!! What should I do here? Dispute that the recently tranferred (and late filled) TLs on the grounds that they are duplicates? I have already disputed lates on these TLs that were legitimately wrong on their part and it wouldn't let me dispute electronically again on EX. Please advise on my next steps guys. I also have GW letters out to the service provider where I was late (ACS/CES) but they responded saying they won't change anything. Do I keep GWing? Dispute? Something else?

3. I also unfortunately have 2 student loan TLs that went to collections that somehow got lost in the shuffle. One is in the process of being rehabbed, it is almost done (July) and the other one only shows on 1 of my credit reports (TU). Since that one was a Perkins loan I was thinking of contacting the school directly to see if I could pay it off with them in a lump sum and be done with it. Would that get that TL deleted or back in good standing then?

On #2, how long have the duplicate accounts both been reporting as open? The problem with disputing is that it will put the whole account under more scrutiny - currently EQ is reporting inaccurate information more favorable to you by stating that the account was never late. You run the risk of that being corrected if you dispute the account status. I would wait one reporting cycle, giving them time to update the information and then dispute if both sets of student loans are still reporting as open.

On #3, no, don't do this. You only receive the benefits of rehab if you complete rehab. If you pay a student loan in full while rehab, then the account will continue to report as a derogatory account because the account was closed with a derogatory status.

Welcome to the boards!