As of April 2015 outside of one six year old late payment to Sallie Mae, the only negative item on my entire credit profile will be an old auto loan with Wells Fargo Auto Finance. I missed numerous payments and ultimately the car was sold for less than the original balance in a settlement. Six months or so ago I wrote a goodwill letter to Wells Fargo attempting to get this account removed early (It's due to fall off around July 2017), I explained that the reason we had to reach a settlement was because my car was hit by a hit and run driver and I couldn't afford my insurance deductible at the time to compensate for their mistake. I also explained that I was laid off three months after acquiring the car. Both of these things are true, but WF didn't seem to care. A few months later I received a response stating something along the lines of "if the information is accurate we won't remove it".
I also called and spoke with a woman at WF who told me the same thing. Should I continue to call, should I continue to write letters? If I could just get this account deleted my credit profile would be almost perfect in a few short months. Have any of you ever had success getting this company to remove an item early? If so, please tell me how you did it, that would be greatly appreciated.
One idea I had was to contact WF and offer to pay the difference between what I owed and what I sold the car for. Would they go for this? For 4 1/2 years this has been listed as a settled account, would they even be allowed to accept a payment at this point? I don't even remember how much less I sold the car for compared to what I owed, I want to say it was 2-3k, but I would gladly pay if it meant getting the account removed early. Any suggestions?
Another question...
If I offer to pay the difference and they tell me that all they can do is update the account from settlement to paid in full, is that worth it from a credit perspective? How much will that improve my score? I just called and found that the difference was only 1064.91, I thought it was going to be 2-3k. Again, would it be worth it to pay that amount to get a simple account status update?