Starting my Credit Repair Journey

[Anonymous]

Currently sitting at a 520 for my FICO score, and just recently scinged up for sky blue credit repair. Yes I know it's a servive I'm paying for that I could do for free myself, but with being a full time student and working two jobs, I'd rather just let some people who are experienced help me. 

I'm just wondering if there is anything I can do myself on top what they will be doing. The main things affecting my credit are a medical bill, and a mutitude of late payments on nmy student loans.

I've tried calling a negotiating a Pay for Delete deal with the medical bill, but was told they don't do that.

I also tried calling my loan provider and trying to negotiate something, Given I'm back in school, my loans are considered current, but I asked if i could make a series of advanced payments over a period of time to show a good payment history, if we could possibly get some of my negative items removed, and they told me that was a no-go as well.

Is there anything open to my to try myself, or should I just let sky send in their challanges and hope for the best?

[simplegirl]

Usually when you work with a credit repair company they don’t want you to do anything in regards to your credit report. 

[FireMedic1]

Save your $79 a month. @gdale6 had a sure fire way to get that med collection taken care of. Whats the name of the student loan comapny or is it is fed loan? Many here can help you in that regard. Student loans were much different in the 80's, so I'm no help in that dept.

[gdale6]

Welcome to the board OP

Medical collections are some of the easiest to get removed from your CRs, here are the steps that you should follow to address them:

1. Call the OC and see if insurance can be billed, (or-rebilled), collections ultimately paid by insurance get removed per new rules that came from CRAs settlement with 22 state AGs. If not then
2. see if you qualify for Charity Care, if not then
3.  ask that they recall the collection in exchange for full payment
4. Send the reporting CA a PFD offer
5. Google the HIPAA Process and contact its creator for help, this process cannot be discussed in any forum of myFico.

[Anonymous]

Would it be wise to attempt to play "hard ball" with the debt collector?

Like tell them, you can either give me a pay for delete orni can let that sit there for 7 years and drop off?

Or would that just be more likely to have them being to to court for the amount owed?

[KJinNC]

Note that this board's terms of service do not let us discuss credit repair services, so if there are some "missing pieces" in how people respond, that is probably the reason.

If you don't have some good accounts, it may be worth getting 1-2 that are easy to open (like an Open Sky secured card or a Self Lender secured installment loan) so some positive stuff is showing up. As for the other items, I would do nothing to avoid stepping on toes or sending mixed messages.

Good luck!

[Anonymous]

First thing, do not use this service. The chances of people succeeding with these services is almost zero. If you follow their plan, it will take years and years to get straightened out and if you don’t do everything exactly as they tell you, it won’t work anyway.

[Anonymous]

Bit if an update, turns out my score using Credit Karma was drastically inaccurate.

My TU score is actually 598 as opposed to the 507 that credit Karma was telling me...

I called the OC for my medical bill and paid that in full to have it removed and plan on paying down my total credit usage(currently around 70%) below 20% when I get paid on Friday.

I'll be excited to see the updated score when these things take effect.

[Anonymous]

I hope you have it in writing that they will remove it when paid.
They will say anything and lie to get you to pay. One tactic is telling you things on a “recorded line”, like you’ll have proof of what they said.
First, they aren’t going to provide you with a recording and second, even if they did, they are allowed to lie.
I won’t pay unless they put it on paper. Otherwise I’m risking the debt being re-aged and still having the collection although it shows paid.

[Anonymous]

This was though the hospital that I orginally owed the money to, I could understand the creditors lying, but I see no vantage in them lying about it.

Plus I still owe them money on a few other items that are in collections(for whatever reason arent showing on any of my credit reports) and I told them I'd take care of those when I saw that the main item I paid was removed, so it would be I'm their best interest to do so.