Kohl’s charge off

[Anonymous]

In 2015 I had a Kohl’s cc that was a charge off for $596. If I pay it off... will it improve my credit score? And how do I get them to remove it from my credit report?

[Anonymous]

Write them a PFD letter. There's plenty of info here, and elsewhere, on what this is & how to do it. 

Good luck. 

[miz2006]

I’m in the same boat! let’s do these PFDs together 🤗. I sent an email to the president’s assistant who replied something about email not being secure. Placed multiple calls but no response yet.

[Anonymous]

My experience so far with them.  I called the number on an old bill, validated account info, updated email address etc willing to pay in full for deletion right then, especially since they are on a recorded line. They offered a 60% settlement over 3 months and stated they wouldn’t delete under any circumstance.  Since they claimed they wouldn’t delete, then send me a settlement agreement in writing that it will be marked settled for less and my balance would be zero.   I received my letter, I called the very next day and paid. Credit reports across the board updated except they still show a balance.  Called AND Emailed this time, to send copies of their letter and my payment and screenshots of credit reports.  Now things changed.  They called back after my email with attachments to say that the balance will never go to zero unless I pay it all off basically nullifying the settlement.  I go back to our original conversation at that point, I will pay the rest today if you delete the entire trade line and they tell me they can’t or won’t.  I hung up with them at that point and disputed the same day send in all of my documentation. Waiting now for results of the dispute.  At least take the balance to zero, ideally delete the whole thing.  We shall see.

[RobertEG]

A credit card is a revolving account, and the current balance continues to be included in your calculation of %util of revolving credit until it reaches $0.  If the current % util is high, then paying could lower your overall % util, and also remove the adverse affect of that single card having its own high %  util.

However, affect on overall scoring may not necessarily be positive.

Paying will not remove the prior derogs reported in your payment history profile.

Additionally, until you finally pay, the period of delinquency clock is continuing to tick.

If the creditor has not filed updated reporting for some time showing the extended period that the debt has remained unpaid, then when you do pay, that updated reporting to show paid will also show that the period since intial account delinquency has extended up to that date, so it can affect scoring of the total period of delinquency.

Sometime postive effects outweigh negative effects, such as when the % uti is very high, or the creditor has been reporting regular updates, and thus the final update when paid will not significantly impact the period of delinquency scoring.

However, sometimes the negative scoring effects outweigh the positive effect of decreased % util,  such as when the creditor has not been making regular monthly updates, or the % util was small at time it was paid.