Help on rebuilding credit..PLS!

[jamie123]

At this point you should be calling these people and negotiating nicely with them. I mean I don't feel it is in your best interest at this point to verify EXACTLY how much you owe and put it in writing. Now, you will have to call and negotiate that figure down.

This can go 1 of 2 ways. You call them with your best SUNNY personality showing and graciously negotiate the money amount down along with a pay for delete.

Or...You play hardball with them, they play hardball with you. They take you to court and win a judgment against you and you then REALLY lose.

I FEEL your pain. You are in a bad situation. Your roommate screwed you over! You need to get over it and come to a solution that is best for your future.

Unfortunately you both are on the hook equally when it comes to a joint account. You can't just pay half.

You have 3 options here:

1. You pay it and chalk the loss of your roommates portion to a very expensive lesson in Life Course 101. Your credit survives practically unscathed.

2. You don't pay it on principal and they sue you and your roommate and win a judgment. They will then come after you and get their money even if they have to garnish your wages. Your credit will be toast for a very long time.

3. You pay it. Take your roommate to Small Claims Court and win a judgment against her. Then you have to collect the money from her which will be very difficult. Although you could have the judgment placed on her credit report. (Spite, I love it! Karma!)

You need to be on the phone at this point. Call your roommate every day just like creditors will be doing to you soon. Don't take no for an answer! Call her father. Its a lot of money, what's your time worth?

Call the creditors and ALWAYS be nice and polite! Start the negotiations. Don't expect this to be solved in one 5 minute phone call.

Your thoughts?

[Anonymous]

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@jamie123 wrote:

At this point you should be calling these people and negotiating nicely with them. I mean I don't feel it is in your best interest at this point to verify EXACTLY how much you owe and put it in writing. Now, you will have to call and negotiate that figure down.

This can go 1 of 2 ways. You call them with your best SUNNY personality showing and graciously negotiate the money amount down along with a pay for delete.

Or...You play hardball with them, they play hardball with you. They take you to court and win a judgment against you and you then REALLY lose.

I FEEL your pain. You are in a bad situation. Your roommate screwed you over! You need to get over it and come to a solution that is best for your future.

Unfortunately you both are on the hook equally when it comes to a joint account. You can't just pay half.

You have 3 options here:

1. You pay it and chalk the loss of your roommates portion to a very expensive lesson in Life Course 101. Your credit survives practically unscathed.

2. You don't pay it on principal and they sue you and your roommate and win a judgment. They will then come after you and get their money even if they have to garnish your wages. Your credit will be toast for a very long time.

3. You pay it. Take your roommate to Small Claims Court and win a judgment against her. Then you have to collect the money from her which will be very difficult. Although you could have the judgment placed on her credit report. (Spite, I love it! Karma!)

You need to be on the phone at this point. Call your roommate every day just like creditors will be doing to you soon. Don't take no for an answer! Call her father. Its a lot of money, what's your time worth?

Call the creditors and ALWAYS be nice and polite! Start the negotiations. Don't expect this to be solved in one 5 minute phone call.

Your thoughts?

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+1 excellent advise and I def recommend #3

while we wait for you to post back one thing i will recommend is building while fixing your derogs.  Dont just use all your time fixing your derogs then when you have a good-great report your back to square one with no credit history.  you could do capital one secured then i would recommend you check out a local credit union and see if they will offer a secured loan and a secured credit card heres why:

you fund the secured loan say 1,000 for example then you take the loan and open a secured cc that way you have one revolving and one installment account right then and there.  even if you just wanted to open up just the cc's thats fine too

[agilbert6]

Thanks Jamie!

You've been very helpful.  Would I been negotiating with the apartment complex or NCS at this point?  NCS is the agency that called and informed me.

I see there's really no loophole to dodging this apartment bullet without doing something I really don't want to do or having them do something I really don't want to be a part of.

What would you suggest to do about the other adverse accounts?

[agilbert6]

Thanks for the advice, RootPooty!

Are there a lot of companies that offer secured loans?  I was thinking about getting a loan but wasn't sure if that was the correct step I wanted to take when rebuilding credit.

I was also looking into the Wells Fargo secured card.  Would you suggest Capital 1 instead?

[Anonymous]

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@agilbert6 wrote:

Thanks for the advice, RootPooty!

Are there a lot of companies that offer secured loans?  I was thinking about getting a loan but wasn't sure if that was the correct step I wanted to take when rebuilding credit.

I was also looking into the Wells Fargo secured card.  Would you suggest Capital 1 instead?

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Most credit unions offer it. mostly all major banks are getting away from secured products.  While building credit i would highly suggest looking into a local credit union. they are much easier to deal with especially after youve built some credit with them they would be more leniant to offer you say an auto loan or unsecured personal loan.  Some credit unions are a little strict but for the most part they are the way to go.  Are you eligible for navy federal credit union?  Do you have any family in the military?  Im wondering about your suntrust checking that you mentioned.  Do you currently have a checking account now?  Do you know if the account was entered into check systems?

Dont be so hard on yourself just because you ruined your credit temporary.  Your still very young and this is fixable.  Last Oct I had about 7-8 bad accounts with no possitive ones with about 5000 in collections.  Now im down to one last bad account with 4 credit card accounts and I went from low 500 scores to high 600's.  While dealing with the agencies and attempting a pay for delete keep in mind while this does happen not all agencies do it.  Some will flat out refuse it.  They would rather die than exchange payment for a delete lol. I will never understand it.  Most of the collections I dealt with refused a pay for delete so I just paid them then sent them a good will letter asking them kindly to delete the bad account and they did it.  Ive had more success doing things that way.  Keep in mind a paid collection looks better than an unpaid one in a manual review.  Scorewise there is no difference between a paid account and unpaid.

[agilbert6]

Nope, no family in the military so I'm going to have to wing it on my own.

My plan after reading this entry is to try to get the apartment and comcast off first. (I dont think they have reported to CRA yet...still gottta get full report).  My goal is to have this done by mid-september (possible?)

I am now in the pursuit of getting a loan, as you suggested, along with a secured CC so I can start building as I am repairing.

I've heard VZW is a pain to work with, so I will be sending them DV letters first thing tomorrow, along with the CA for Suntrust and AT&T.

I'm more than willing to negotiate a SETTLEMENT PFD with the apartment and comcast, but if it's not going to get deleted then I'm going to be touger to budge.  

I know being patient is everything, but I am shooting for October to have all of this removed or in good standings.  After reading this board, it is very possible.

[agilbert6]

Oh yeah, as far as Suntrust is concerned I currently dont have an account with them.  When I lost my dispute and my account went into the negatives I started using my savings account instead.  I now think it has been closed because I havent used it since April.  I also had a checkings and savings with Wells Fargo that I think has been closed.  I really want to pay Suntrust off and continue service with them, but only if it is deleted from my report.

[jamie123]

Slooooow down!

We discuss one problem and here you are going off in hurray in the WRONG direction just because you want to get it done! Do you really want to keep digging a bigger hole?

You may have a LARGE problem you are not even aware of. Do you have a checking account? Do you have a savings account? What bank do you have them with?

When a bank closes someone's account for insufficient funds they report it to a company called ChexSystems. If your name appears on ChexSystems report it will become difficult if not impossible to open another checking account with a bank or credit union. Your name stays on ChexSystems for 5 years! You don't have this problem do you?

You can't just asume your account is closed with Wells Fargo! C'mon now, you really need to slow down and take it 1 step at a time. Get in touch with Wells Fargo and find out if this account is still open. If it is still open you make sure you keep it open if you don't have another checking or savings account.

You can probably get this done by October but for it to work you need a plan first. Then you need to follow the plan.

Your largest problem is the apartment fiasco and the Comcast bill. Focus on them and make sure all the I's are dotted and the T's are crossed. Get this behind you as quickly as possible and make sure they are removed from your report.

Please answer the questions I asked in this post.

I will be back with some advice on secured credit cards.

Why can't you access your reports at annualcreditreport.com? If you can post here you should be able to download your reports from there?

You also now need to ask Chex Systems for your report.

[agilbert6]

LOL

Slowing...

I just went to the ChexSystems website and ordered a copy of my report, which should be here within the next week or so.  Hopefully, the accounts are still open.  I had money in both (Suntrust savings and Wells Fargo checking/savings) but what I'm saying is I havent used them in so long I don't know if theyre still open.  I'll be contacting both banks Monday morning to see.

Which proper procedure would you suggest taking to have this gone in a timely manner?  I'm not trying to rush it, because I have a year to build up my credit to the high 700s.  However, I wanted the adverse accounts that are harming me gone asap.

The reason I can't access my reports via annualcreditreport.com is because I've already used my free trial on all 3, but Monday I planned on getting an official copy with this site.

[jamie123]

rootypooty gave you some really great advice about credit unions. At some point you will need to join a credit union but we have to find out if you have anything reported on ChexSystems first. I agree 100% with rootypooty that the best place to get auto loans and mortgages is your local credit union.

You need to get 2 secured credit cards now. These are my 3 bank suggestions. There are plusses and minuses concerning each creditor. You have read the forums so you should be aware of these issues. If it were me I would pick Bank of America first, (Because it is a prime bank and will go unsecured after 1 year of good credit behavior history.) and then choose between Cap1 or WF as the second card.

Pick any 2 of the 3:

Capital One

Bank of America

Wells Fargo

It will take approximately 3 to 4 weeks before you actually have these cards in hand. It takes forever for the creditors to process secured credit card applications. I don't know why that is, but it is that way.

Once you have these cards in hand and reporting, your scores should start to climb every month. You need to make sure you pay these cards in full several days before the due date each month. If you want to maximize your scores to the fullest read the forums about the less than 9% reporting on one card process.

When your scores rise above 640 and your first 2 CC have reported at least 3 months of payment history, you then want to apply for a Walmart card. You get a free TU FICO score each month!

DON'T APPLY FOR ANY MORE CREDIT CARDS UNTIL THESE 3 CARDS ARE 1 YEAR OLD!!!

You only really want to have credit cards from PRIME banks. Don't apply for any more store cards, you won't need them and they will be a detriment to you receiving PRIME bank credit cards with high credit lines. Prime banks won't lend to you until you have at LEAST 1 year of history with multiple CC. After your cards are 1 year old apply for 1 card each from 2 of these PRIME banks:

AMEX

CitiBank

Chase

Bank of America

Barclays

Discover

Wells Fargo

If you make 1 late payment in the next year, all bets are off and this plan falls apart. Pay in full, pay on time!

Concerning the other issues you might have on your report. The MOST important is the Suntrust and Wells Fargo accounts. If you learn one thing on this forum it should be this: NEVER SCREW UP A CHECKING OR SAVINGS ACCOUNT!!! There are many laws about proper use of checking accounts. If you write ONE bad check you could end up in prison! Not likely, but it does happen! Write a string of bad checks and the POLICE will be knocking on your door not just a creditor harassing you by phone.

Let's get your priorities in order:

1. The apartment fiasco.

2. Comcast bill.

3. Suntrust

4. Wells Fargo

All the rest of the derogatories are minor problems when compared to my list of 4. Don't worry, the other problems are important in there own way and we will work to have them removed. You need to work on the 4 major baddies first and apply for 2 secured credit cards.