Hello all. I'd like to thank everyone on these forums, you've all been a big help in helping me understand how credit scoring works and how to recover my credit. I only have two negatives on my credit report.
1) Late payments with Universal Mortgage. Apparently my bank denied an automatic withdraw almost 8 months ago. For the last 8 months I have been 30 days late each month because of this. I had no idea of this until I pulled my credit report. I contacted the lender and they agreed to remove the lates if I paid an extra payment to catch it back up
2) A few years ago I had an AMEX card through my work. I was young and stupid, and used the card for non-business related expenses. This is the history of my AMEX card.
Account Type: Open
Date Opened: 10/2003
Balance: $2,137.
Date Reported: 12/2005
Account Status: CHARGE-OFF
My last activity on this card was early-mid '04.
I would like to buy a house in the next 6 months and really need to improve my credit. Before I found this site or even did any research on credit repair, I called AMEX and requested the monthly statements for 6 months prior to my last payment. They sent me monthly statements from the current date back to July 04. These monthly statements starting in July 04 only show a past due bill of approx. $1400. Each consecutive statement increases the ammount owed due to interest until it reaches $2,137. Then I have repeat statements showing the ammount owed: $2,137. Out of all the statements they do not show any activity on the account. I don't see any transactions, or any "proof" of where I actually used the card.
I then, without completely reading the forums, sent a PFD letter I found here: http://ficoforums.myfico.com/fico/board/message?board.id=generalcredit&message.id=2659
I changed the requested reply date from 14 days to 21 days. They responded 19 days after the mail was received and my request was denied.
That is my current history with AMEX. I'm not for sure if I should:
A) Pay the ammount in full. I still haven't come to a conclusion whether PIF is better than a charge off on my credit. A lot of forum posts say to not waste my money. I believe that it would look better, but I would like some of your opinions
B) Try to dispute the debt since AMEX has no record showing actualy activity. Do I even have legal grounds regarding this?
C) Attempt to send another PFD or GW letter to AMEX.
So here I am, and I'm not for sure what to do. Please give me any advice you have!
Message Edited by MikeT on 09-27-2007 04:39 AM
