Help with my derogatory mark on CK!!!!

[Anonymous]

Hello,

This is my first post on this website. I recently got a derogatory mark, according to Credit Karma. To make a long story short, I was going to an out of state university and left during the middle of the year. My buddies who I lived with didn't fully pay one month of Comcast service (internet) and I'm just finding this out over a year later. I was done going to the university and wasn't in contact with them much, so I had no idea this happened until CK showed it on my report. I guess the Comcast account had my social security, and because of that, the penalty of them not paying affected me. So my question is, is there anyway I can get out of this and explain to whichever company that I need to explain that I wasn't living there and it wasn't my responsibility? I thought we changed all of the account information when I left, but I guess the social security number was never changed, so technically it was still my account, even though the username/email/password, etc. wasn't mine. From what I understand, this stupid situation will affect my score for 7 years. I called Comcast and they were pretty useless about the situation. Am I out of luck? Can I write a letter to the credit bureaus explaining my situation??? Thanks to anyone who responds to this.

[Anonymous]

It was your responsibility even if you don't live there.

But you may be able to get them to do a goodwill removal.

Also those roommates were not "your buddies" as you can see.

[Anonymous]

Have you paid the account already? Has it gone up collections? If it's gone to collections but you haven't paid it yet you can negotiate a pay for delete, wherein the agency agrees to delete the account entirely from your report upon your payment of an agreed upon amount. If you already paid Comcast or the collection agency you can start a goodwill letter campaign.

In either event you want to check out the rebounding from bad credit / credit repair portion of this forum - I forgot what is actually called. There you will find advice on both options.

[RobertEG]

Did you apply for, and was your name included under, the account agreement with Comcast?

You may, if you never agreed to or were a part of the service agreement, file a police report asserting identity theft, and thus get any information pertaining thereto, including the collection, blocked from your credit report under the FCRA identity theft process of section 605A.