I'm new to this credit thing and at 54 I'd thought I'd seen it all. My wife has had alot of illness and it was her work as a nurse that afforded us health insurance so when she had to quit work we lost our health insurance and we couldn't afford health insurance because of the pre-existing condition clause and we couldn't afford the dr bills and medicine and still pay $1k a month for health ins that didnt cover any of it for a year.
Well I'm happy to say my wife finally got on disablity (only took 2 years). We got a big check that paid off a lot of our bills and got us caught up. We paid off the bills that were against our credit (well most of them) and to rebuild our credit we go a Cap One CC with a $300 max. I buy gas during the week on the CC and pay it off on the following weekend. Except last September. We were visiting our son in Texas and I really forgot about it. So we've been with Cap One for about 18 months and that was my only late payment.
So after seeing all the GW posts I sent the CEO of Cap One an email. Just last night around 10:30pm. At 6:30 this evening a young lady called and said she was with the executive branch of Cap One and that she wanted to help me get it lifted. No promises but she would try. She also voluntarily said she would try to get my credit limit raised and that would help my score. She said that she would call me back in a couple of days!
I also sent GW to three other CA that had collections against us that we satisfied last month and asked them to lift them from our score. One emailed me this morning that they had already sent a request but she sent another request when she found that CB hadn't cleared them. So we wait!
Thanks for the posting and I'm doing the same in the hopes that maybe I can help someone. I guess I'm paying it forward!
Starting Score: 
keep us posted with Capital one, I had no luck with my GW letter to the Exec Office
Amex PRG NPSL, Amex Delta 2k (AU) Discover iT 5k, BOFA Siggy $5k, BOFA AlaskaAir Siggy 5k, BBVA Compass $5k! Macy's $4.5k, C1 $2.5, SFCU $2.5k, SFCU LOC $2k, Paypal SmartC $4k, Sam's 5.5k Victoria Secret $2k, Kay's $1.7k.,76/Citi $1.5k Amazon $5k, Walmart Disco $3k JC Penny $4k, C1 $2.5, BBRZ 700.thanks! Fingers crossed! I just googled CEO's email address and sent him a short 5 paragraph email just last night and the young lady called me tonight. I'll let you know.