Ok... over on the general credit issues forum, yesterday I posted about the fact that our former landlords/property rental company are rather charmingly trying to make us pay rent from July-December 2008 despite having agreed that we could break our lease when we bought our house in May. We got home to a letter last night saying basically, pay up or we're sending you to collections.
Much hyperventilating ensued, although I think I'm feeling a bit more confident about things today (I mean, they DID agree, and they know they did!) after explaining the whole thing to a few lawyery types and people who've had landlords try the same thing today - all have basically said 'they can't do that', which sounds encouraging.
ANYWAY... I'm at least mildly confident that we'll get them to back off, and regardless, I have no intention of paying them a single penny as we do not OWE a single penny, but... while I'm not going to pay them a thing in order to stop this happening, I am rather worried about what will happen if a collection suddenly appears on my credit reports when AmEx do their every 30-seconds (exaggerate much, me?) soft pull. I have other cards, and guess they may respond unfavorably, but AmEx (not least because their credit limits represent the vast majority of my revolving credit, but also because they are the cards I'm actually glad I have, as opposed to the ones that don't really serve any purpose other than to, well... just be there) is the one that REALLY worries me.
I've done a bit of searching, but if a collection does hit my reports, what can I expect? Instant cancellation of both cards? Extreme CLD-ing? Ratejacking through the roof? And if I then successfully do whatever's necessary to fight said collection (I have no idea about this stuff, I've never had an account in collections before, let alone been threatened with being sent to collections for thousands of dollars I don't even owe) and get it removed from my reports... what then? Will they reinstate whatever it is they've taken away...?
This makes me so mad. We've done it all properly, had everything agreed to and did it all by the book (ie by the lease) - sadly I didn't fight hard enough to get said agreement in writing from the accursed property manager, and now here I am being freshly reminded (and appalled by the fact) that there are plenty of people out there that it is a bad, BAD idea to trust, who will happily **** you over without thinking anything of it.
Anyway, I digress... if anyone has first-hand knowledge of what AmEx are likely to do in these kind of circumstances, I'd love to hear it. Oh wait... no I wouldn't. I am SO looking forward to the plummeting of our credit scores and all the other fun that will no doubt accompany it if they send us to some slimeball CA.