What do I do? I can PIF

Anonymous · ‎01-20-2009

I have a bunch of negative marks on my credit: charge offs, open collection accounts. No public records/judgements/liens/etc and for the most part, almost all of these are less than $1000. I am now in a position where I could call every collector tomorrow and PIF. However, I won't get these marks removed over the phone so I've started to DV a couple, PFD a couple and hope that I get most of the accounts removed.

Here's my dilemma - I'm looking to buy a house by May 2009 and I would like to get pre-qualified for a loan. I have yet to get a FICO score but I did get my scores from freecreditreport.com. The image shows all three of my scores and the "explanation" of them. It says I do not have a major credit card - I just got a Mastercard that has not started to report.

Link to Credit Scores Image

Should I keep at what I'm doing and take this slow and try to get these items removed from my reports? Should I just call these collectors and settle for what I can and move on? At this point, I have no idea which is better.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Message Edited by bigdguy on 01-20-2009 04:40 PM

Message Edited by bigdguy on 01-20-2009 04:52 PM

fused · ‎01-20-2009

Welcome! From a credit repair standpoint, it looks like you have a plan. The only thing I would change is keep everything in writing when dealing with a CA, don't talk on the phone with them. A few questions:

- Do you have any other CCs (store or gas) reporting to the CRAs?

- What other accounts do you have reporting to the CRAs? Loans, etc?

If you can afford to, I would pull your FICO scores. The FAKOs you posted are not used by creditors.

Anonymous · ‎01-21-2009

Hey thanks. Glad to be here. I'd be lost without this forum.

I have a JCPenney department store CC (not a major CC).Short story about that: For quite some time I had a balance near my limit and an interest rate > 26%. I was only paying the minimum every month. I finally started paying attention to my bill and the finance charges alone > $30 every month so I decided to something about it. My limit was $1700 and the balance was in the area of $1500. I took a chunk out of my savings account and put it towards the bill and I started rapidly paying it down. A few weeks after I paid it completely off, I got a letter from the card issuer stating that an evaluation of my account has led them to decrease my limit to $100. F them. But, back to the other stuff...

That JCPenney card is the only active card on my account. I have other cards that are all now closed because of inactivity, charge offs, etc. that still report. Some of them I have paid/settled - some I have not. A couple of cards that were closed to inactivity (as far as I know, I paid them off while the card was still active and never used them again) have late payments on them. I sent a GW letter to them to see if they will remove the late payments. I also sent a GW letter to JCP to see if they will remove my late payments.

Other accounts that are reporting include student loans. A couple of my student loans have been paid off after I pulled my CR's but they have perfect payment histories. No car loan, no mortage, no public records/liens, no tax problems. My debt problems are almost exclusively from CC's and just not paying them. I did have a private student loan that went in to default with no chance to rehab.That was just settled at 90% of the remaining balance a week ago. Not sure how that is going to be reported on my CR's now.

Anything else?