How to Raise my Score

[Anonymous]

So my score is a nasty 594, I looked at my report and I have 9 credit agency past dues on my report of which 7 have been paid off, they're still a flag how do I get those seven remove ?  I am going to google the last two and see if i can get those paid off. 

My question is 1. How to get those seven un flagged? and or off my credit that have already been paid?

2. Will this help my score?

3. I have 5 collections for almost nothing like a $12, a $101, etc.  I looked to see who has them so I can contact and pay but the it only lists a string of letters and numbers.  How can I get this fixed?

I appreciate any and all feedback thanks all

[Anonymous]

Paid collections do not help your score.  Start sending GW letters asking for them to be removed.

Where did you get your report?  Usually that string of numbers means a medical collection but sometimes its not.  Have you got your free reports from annualcreditreport.com?

[Anonymous]

thank you I am on that right now working through Experian, can't seem to find those there.  Transunion isn't pulling up for me either and I corrected my name in the first report.

so even if they're paid they don't help my score what's a GW letter? is there a template?

Thank you so much I have no clue what I am doing here

[Anonymous]

GW is a good will letter. Basically you are asking them to do you a favor and delete the account reporting from the credit bureaus. If you head over to the rebuilding forum you will find plenty of discussion. As to the ones that are unpaid you may want to try a pay for delete (PFD) which means they will erase the reporting for payment of the debt. There is more success with this on medical debts than others which may be good news for you. Again the rebuilding forum has a wealth of info.

Although paying a collection account will not improve your credit score it does help when future creditors are reviewing your file. It at least says that "Although I went through a bad time I made good on my debts." And the impact of the negative information will diminish with time and new positive information. Collections have a mandated drop off when they cannot be reported on your credit any longer. For general collections it is 7 1/2 years although they sometimes drop sooner. Judgments and liens or bankruptcy are all different.

Just keep reading on the forums and asking questions and you will soon see the light at the end of the tunnel. A large percentage of us found these forums through attempting to clean up past credit mistakes.

[Anonymous]

Thank you I will check out the forum

[ABuckNow]

Unfortunately, the $ amount of the collection doesn't seem to matter, in my experience.

Paying the collection off will not improve your score unless you can PFD with the CA and get it removed entirely.

I had 4 collections on one of my reports - I managed to get them all off and got a pretty decent score boost.  But getting the last one off will help your score much more than getting the first one off.

If you have no collections on your CR, then get one, it's a pretty big hit.  Get another one? It'll ding it again, but not by as much.  A third, less so, etc.  I don't know (thankfully!) at what point additional collections stop hurting your score (ie if you go from 20 to 21 collections, can't imagine it hurting your score that much, if at all).

But the point is - the reverse is true too.

Best of luck - post any questions here, people are helpful on these boards.