After some time gardening and a few GW letters I have gotten my FICO up to 662 and am looking to apply for a credit card to help build my credit further. I pulled my TU and EQ reports and the baddies that are showing now are a serious delinquency on my student loans in 2011 and an AMEX card that is now in settlement. On my TU report the account is listed as open with remarks saying: "CLOSED BY CREDIT GRANTOR; >UNPAID BALANCE CHARGED OFF<". Payment status is also listed as charged off. I know there's nothing I can do about reporting of the student loan payments (I've certainly tried), but would it be possible to have AMEX change the status of the account to show that I am paying the debt, or is this an accurate way of reporting the account? I'm also curious about what card I should apply for. Should I do a retail card (e.g Amazon) or something like the Capital One Quicksilver which I'm told I have fairly good approval odds with. Some sort of rewards would be nice, but I'm mostly concerned with finding something that I can get a decent limit with upfront and also keep for a long time and grow with.
