Charge off for low amount

Anonymous · ‎05-15-2017

Hi everyone- just a quick question. Do charge offs have to be for a certain amount? I owed $67 that I was not aware of to von Maur and they listed me as a charge off. I only saw that I owed them from my credit report when I pulled it and paid right away. I just feel that owing $67 is not enough to constitute a charge off. They refuse to remove it. Will try calling corporate today.

Revelate · ‎05-15-2017

@Anonymous wrote:
Hi everyone- just a quick question. Do charge offs have to be for a certain amount? I owed $67 that I was not aware of to von Maur and they listed me as a charge off. I only saw that I owed them from my credit report when I pulled it and paid right away. I just feel that owing $67 is not enough to constitute a charge off. They refuse to remove it. Will try calling corporate today.

Charge offs can be for any amount (unfortunately), it's just a notation that the lender does not expect to get paid and marked it as a loss.

RobertEG · ‎05-15-2017

Taking a charge-off is usually not discretionary on the part of the creditor/businss.

The amount is not per se a factor.

Federal regs mandate the removable of accounts receivable from statement of assets once they reach the point of little expectation of being paid, in order to prevent the overstatement of assets to shareholders and potential investors.

However, nothing in the federal regs mandates that a creditor or business report the fact of their having taken a charge-off to any of the CRAs.

Thus, I would not approach from the point of view of whether a charge-off has to be a certain amount, but rather from the point of view of the low amount being a mitigating factor in their decision to report or to grant good-will deletion of that reporting.