Investigations on reports

[Anonymous]

I paid a charge off on my account about 3-4 months ago and it never came off. I also noticed that my student loan marked me as late twice even though I was in deferment. I opened a dispute and it's current being investigated. Is it normal that this has dropped my score? My score went from a 601 to a 593. If the student loan fixes my 30 days late will it go back up?

[Simply827]

When an account is being investigated, it is not scored. Therefore, your positive history on the account isn't counted either. Your score will go back up when the account is finished investigation, whether the late is still on or not.

[llecs]

Partly true on FICO ignoring a disputed TL. FICO will ignore the balance, the CL (if revolving), and the payment history. Other factors like the length of history, impact to AAoA, impact to scoring bucket, mix of credit, etc. are not impacted during a dispute.

OP, how were you alerted to the score change? Was it via ScoreWatch? Know that whenever you have a comment change SW will alert you to that change. At the same time SW will grab your latest Eq FICO. It's easy to make the assumption that the alert caused the score change when it's quite possible other things happened like balance changes, etc.

Even if you pay a charge-off, it can still report. It can report for 7-7.5 yrs from the DOFD of that debt.

[Anonymous]

That's possible but I got an alert a week ago that it was at 601 and now an alert that its 593. I don't know what else could of caused such a drop.

[RobertEG]

As to the dispute, you disputed a charge-off on the basis that it was not deleted after payment of the debt?

Payment does not negate the prior reporting of the charge-off.

[dddewdrop]

---

@RobertEG wrote:

As to the dispute, you disputed a charge-off on the basis that it was not deleted after payment of the debt?

Payment does not negate the prior reporting of the charge-off.

---

Nor does it negate the present or future reporting of a chargeoff. That is why it is recommended that as part of the negociation when settling a chargeoff that you send a PFD letter where you ask them to delete the record from your report in exchange for paying them back...

[Simply827]

Thanks for the clarification llecs.

[Anonymous]

I wish I had known I could do that beforehand otherwise I would have. I guess I just wanted it to show that I paid the debt because I figured if I went for a house, the creditors would ask me why I never paid such a small debt. The charge off was only for $100. Is there any chance that they might take it off if I were to ask now?

[dddewdrop]

There is definately a chance they will take it off now if you ask them. I would call and at the same time send a goodwill letter (GW). There are examples of these on this site.. Unfortunately paying off an old bill sometimes doesnt have as much of a positive effect on your credit score as you might think. In fact it can have a negligible  impact on some people's scores.